Dublin Core

Title

"That Akers Girl"November 1890Peterson's Magazine

Description

That Akers Girl.

Miss Cabell had just finished breakfast. A tall mulatto in a turban brought in a pan of hot water and a supply of white towels, and Miss Cabell proceeded, after the custom of housewives in Delaware, to wash the dainty cups and spoons with which she and her brother had sipped their coffee. The sun shone brightly into the little breakfast-room, though the fields stretching down to the bay were white with frost, and a keen wind writhed and twisted the leafless branches of the trees upon the lawn.

It was an octagon room: six of its sides were lined with books, a fire burned in the low grate in the seventh, and in the last a wide window opened; beyond were the frost, the driving wind, and the bay, which stretched out desolate and stormy as the sea.

Anybody with penetration could know at a glance that this cozy exquisitely-neat room belonged to middle-aged single people. No boys had ever tramped over the great skin of the California grizzly which lay before the fire—Miss Cabell always sat with her feet at one side of it; no baby fingers dimmed the gloss upon the old mahogany tables, or disturbed the even piles of papers on the Doctor’s desk. Miss Cabell herself had that air of leisurely uninterested calm, which is impossible to a matron. She was a woman of forty, with a plump, erect, tightly-laced figure, and a coil of fair colorless hair above a fair and colorless face. She finished her task, washed her white fingers, and watched Zoar brush half a dozen crumbs from the floor.

“Miss Cecelia Blynn is coming to spend a few days with me, brother,” she said. “I suppose you will not allow her to take her meals in this sanctum?”

“No. Lay the table in the dining-room, Zoar. You can bring me something on a tray here.”

Miss Cabell laughed. “Poor Cecelia! There are worse people in Kent County. I really felt we ought to ask her. She has been twice round visiting this year. The Hartmans had her in preserving-time, and the Foulkes when they were making Janey’s clothes for the wedding, and I really must get my quilts out of the frame. Besides, you are bidden to entertain the widow and children.”

“Entertain anybody you please, Jane. But Miss Cecelia is such a palpable fraud that she irritates me like the rouged faces or sham jewelry. Why need she keep up this farce of being a homeless orphan visiting here friends? Why can’t she take money for her work, like any honest woman?”

Miss Cabell was provoked, for she foresaw Cecelia’s stay would be short, and how should she finish the quilting? She was silent a moment, watching the Doctor’s back and iron-gray hair as he bent over his writing.

“Well,” she said, judicially, “I suppose Cecelia is a humbug; anybody can see that. But there are other frauds in this village, which your eyes are not keen enough to discover.”

The Doctor gave the inarticulate grunt, half assenting and half patient, with which he usually replied to his sister’s flood of talk. His pen went on—scratch, scratch. She hesitated, not sure that he heard her. He must hear her! This was a more important matter than Janey Foulke’s wedding or Zoar’s shortcomings, which usually formed the staple of her conversations.

“You seem perfectly blind, brother, to the fact that Johnny is completely infatuated with that Akers girl.”

The Doctor directed his letter, sealed it, and laid it aside. As he drew up the paper to begin another, he said absently:

“Johnny infatuated again? He has been madly in love since he was nine years old.”

“Very likely; but it was always with his equals. Now, these Akerses—I really think, Gilbert, that, as you promised poor brother William, on his death-bed, to be a father to his son, you should concern yourself in some degree about his interests.”

Doctor Cabell gathered up his letters and rose. His saw that there was a little heat on his usually pale quiet face.

“It is for John to decide whether I have filled his father’s place, Jane,” he said; “not for me or you.”

“But this Akers girl—”

“You know I will not listen to village gossip. Mrs. Akers was a woman whom every man of right feeling would respect and honor. Now that she is dead, and her daughter is left alone and unprotected in the world, with no fault but her youth and beauty, no man would throw stones at her. What women would do—”

He shrugged his shoulders and paused significantly.

The angry tears rose to Jane’s light eyes. “Very well, Gilbert! If you choose to encourage Johnny to marry that girl, you may bring her home to be mistress here. I have spent six years in this stupid town, solely to make you comfortable. I had a delightful home at the Gurney House, in Wilmington, and I should be only too glad to go back there, heaven knows. Bring her here as soon as you like.”

The Doctor laughed, the quizzical twinkle coming back to his eyes.

“Well, well, Janey, it will be some time before you go back to Gurney House. You have threatened it every week for six years, you know.” He put on his fur cap, buttoned his coat, and went out. But, as he waited in the hall until his horse was brought round, he glanced about him with sparkling eyes, as eager and impatient as when he was a boy.

“‘Bring her home’? ‘To be mistress here’?” he said, half aloud. Then his face lowered, as if he suddenly recognized his own folly, and, mounting his horse, he rode quickly away.

Meanwhile, Miss Cecelia Blynn had arrived, and in a few minutes she and her hostess were seated before the quilting-frame—thread, needles, and wax in readiness. She was a little woman, with long black spiral ringlets on either side of her face, and she had black eyes that had grown keen computing in each house how many days she could extend her “visit,” and whether the board and old gowns given to her would pay for her work. She was a notable worker: her fingers moved as fast as her tongue.

“Oh, there can be no doubt,” she was saying, “that your nephew is engaged to Antonia Akers. Every day, a bouquet of hot-house flowers is sent up there, with Mr. John Cabell’s card; and three times last week he serenaded her with his guitar.”

“If Johnny Cabell marries her, it will be against the consent of his family,” said Jane, sharply. “I authorize you to say so, Ceely. A pretty how-dy’-do! The Cabells are the oldest family in this Hundred; and the Akerses—who are the Akerses?”

“Goodness knows!—the chalk, please, Miss Jane. I remember when Mrs. Akers come to town with this girl, a lank creature of fourteen. The widow was dressed in deep mourning. She took Halston’s house, and lived there till she died, last year. Very quiet—too quiet. There’s always a mystery about people that hold themselves aloof; and, where there’s a mystery, there’s something shameful, you may depend. Why should the girl stay alone in the house now? Nobody there but that old negro woman. She was advised by the rector—and everybody, in fact—to take boarding at Mrs. Rice’s. I’m sure I told her to do it. But no: she must have her own way. ’Tisn’t safe nor proper.”

“Well, I don’t know, Ceely,” said Miss Jane, who was not malicious at the bottom of her cool selfish heart. “The girl is probably attached to the house where she lived with her mother, naturally—and to the old servant. A woman couldn’t live alone in that way, in a city like Wilmington; but, in this village, it’s different. By the way, I’m thinking of going back to Wilmington—the Gurney House is a most fashionable resort now. I do so long for society!”

While Miss Jane was being thus patted and flattered into good humor, her nephew, John Cabell, was walking down the road which lead to the Akers house, with its owner. He was a tall and perfectly well-dressed man, with Greek features, dazzling teeth, and sparkling blue eyes. Nobody ever saw him without being impressed with his singular beauty and faultless dress: nobody was ever impressed by him any further. If you knew him for twenty years, you would still only think of his wonderful eyes or the fit of his gloves. An odd effect of the flaccid nature of the man was that the whole village called him Johnny—never John nor Jack.

The small slight girl, clad in deep black, who walked beside him, on the contrary, would make at first sight a sudden deep mark on your mind. You must love or hate her; you could not be indifferent to her.

“There, now!” said Johnny, petulantly, gloom settling in his noble features, “there’s your house, and I have told you nothing of all I wanted to say. I suppose you won’t ask me to come in?”

“No, Johnny; I receive no visitors, since my mother’s death.”

“It’s very hard on me. I never can speak a word to you, unless I catch you going home like this; and walking in the rain or shivering cold, as it is to-day, one appears to such disadvantage!”

“You never do that, Johnny,” she said, with a furtive smile.

“Nonsense! I never could see my good looks that people talk of,” said the young fellow, anxiously. “I get so tired of the same face in the glass. But never mind me, Antonia. If I could only have time to talk to you, I could explain—”

“Explain what?”

“What I want you to do. I know you don’t care for me, but you might come to it in time. I’ve lots of couples who cared nothing for each other at first, that, by dint of sitting at the same table and consulting about their clothes and the butcher’s bills and such like for years, come to be very fond and comfortable together. No! stop—don’t speak yet, Antonia. It seems this way to me: You’re pretty lonely now; you refuse to visit any of the young folks, and discourage them from coming to your hours; and you live there alone with Sinty; and it’s queer, you know—and folks thinks it’s queer, and they—they—”

“They are talking of me?” cried Antonia, stopping short in the road. Her dark eyes dilated with a sudden terror, and she caught her breath sharply. She looked so small and childish and forlorn, that Johnny’s voice grew hoarse with his excitement.

“You know what tongues some scandal-mongers here have. But what need it matter? I love you. Great heavens, I wish I could tell you how I love you! I haven’t words, Antonia. And I’m my own master: I can marry when I choose. My father left me a good income. The Cabells have connections in the best society in Wilmington. We’ll live there, and you shall be like a queen in the house. Nobody would dare to suspect you there.”

She held out both hands to him.

“You’re a good soul, Johnny,” she said.

“Then you will come?” But his countenance fell a little, for what young fellow with the form of Hercules and the features of Antinous[1] likes to be called “a good soul”?

She looked at him without speaking, for a minute, and then shook her head slowly.

“No, I could not wrong you so much. But, Johnny—”

“What is it?” He tried to draw her nearer. His own eyes were full of tears; his heart was torn with her distress. “What is wrong? Let me help you. I’ll give my life to you. You think, because I’ve been a little fickle— But I’ll never look at another girl now—”

“Yes, you will. You’ll love some nice girl—some woman that has no shame upon her—and be happy. But never suspect me, Johnny—that’s all I ask. Do you stand my friend, no matter what you hear, nor what the proof is against me?”

She wrung her hands, sobbing, as she spoke, and then, turning, ran swiftly into the garden before her house, and disappeared in the thick shrubbery.

Johnny stood irresolute a few minutes, then he struck across the fields, in the direction to intercept Doctor Cabell on his rounds. Had he not always carried his troubles to his uncle?

“I’ll tell him the whole story,” he thought. “He’ll straighten it out and make her marry me!”

The Akers house, as it was called in the village, lay a mile beyond the suburbs, in a secluded valley. A garden and orchard, with a couple of fields, belonged to the house. It was a solitary place, but, in this quiet neighborhood, it was regarded as a perfectly safe abode for the young girl and her old nurse, until her anxiety to prevent visits from any of her mother’s old friends had aroused suspicion and the storm of gossip which swept through the village. These people were not, at heart, unkind folk; but, like most small communities, they suffered from a famine of ideas, and, when a subject for conversation came in their way, they tore and worried it as hungry dogs would a bone.

Antonia, who before her mother’s death had been a frank friendly little girl, had, in the two years that had elapsed, grown silent and reticent. She had long ceased to enter a house in the village. She had been mysteriously absent twice, with Sinty, giving no account of herself on her return. All this, with Johnny’s hopeless passion for her, was a savory dish of gossip for the village.

About sunset of the day on which Johnny had met Antonia, Doctor Cabell passed down the same road and pushed open the little gate leading into the garden. The Doctor, with his compact figure closely buttoned in a gray frieze coat, his resolute step, his homely features lighted by kindly quizzical eyes, was an odd contrast to that magnificent flower of youth, Johnny. He crossed the porch, and, tapping at the door, pushed it open, as he had been in the habit of doing during the years of his attendance on Mrs. Akers.

Antonia was seated on a low chair before the fire, her sewing in her hand. The Doctor had often found her there at work, for she was an industrious little girl. But now her hands had fallen on her lap, and her face was wet with tears. He came up to her quietly and laid his hand on the back of her chair.

“What is wrong, my child?”

She started up, glancing quickly, as he noticed, at a door into an inner room, which stood ajar. The old negro—Sinty—from within, closed it hastily. Antonia held out her hand, drew it back, assured him that she “was quite well, quite well! would he sit down? it was long since he had been there, and she was very glad”—growing paler with every word, with furtive terrified glances at the closed door. She broke down at last, in the middle of a sentence, and stood looking at him helplessly. He silently led her to a chair and seated himself beside her.

“You forget, Antonia, that I promised your mother to help her little girl, if ever she should call on me for help.”

“I have asked for none,” she said, in a whisper.

The Doctor did not hear her. He continued hurriedly, as if reciting a task:

“I came, to-day, not because you needed me. It is my nephew who asked my aid. He thinks I have influence with you, and—”

He stopped abruptly. Her eyes were raised slowly, and met his. Neither spoke. Then she said, as though the words were drawn from her by force:

“You have influence with me, Doctor Cabell.”

“That is very natural,” her interrupted, hastily. “I understand that. I was your mother’s friend. You regard me as a guardian, an old fatherly protector; that is natural. I do not mistake you.”

His gray eyes, full of a wordless pain, were fixed upon the childish pleading face upturned to his. She half rose and drew away from him, as if shaking off some hold upon her.

“And so you come as my guardian, to ask me to marry John Cabell?”

The Doctor rose, walked across the room, and then, coming back, leaned against the mantel.

“John has told me,” he said, in a measured voice, “that he believes you love him; that you refuse to marry him because you fancy that you would bring some trouble or injury upon him. He thinks you are lonely and morbid, and—”

“He thinks that I am the victim of the village slander, and he wants to shelter me from it,” she cried. “It is good—it is noble in Johnny!”

“He is a good honest fellow,” said the elder man, deliberately, after a moment’s silence. “He will be a kind husband. If you love him, Antonia—”

“Well? If I love him—”

“You should not fear to bring trouble to him. What is trouble, to the man whom you love?”

“I do not love John Cabell,” she said. “But I will never bring disgrace to any man. Oh, what have I said?”

For the Doctor was beside her, his eyes on fire, his voice hoarse and broken.

“You do not love him?” he cried. “Antonia, is there any hope that— I am mad! I might almost be your father! Gray hairs—and you, soft and white and sweet as a little lamb! I have told her at last! I am a fool—a fool!”

He dropped into a seat and covered his face.

Antonia’s little figure, as she stood before him, thrilled and dilated. This was not the child he knew, but a woman—airy, coquettish, triumphant.

She put out one finger and touched his head lightly.

“I see no gray hairs,” she said, simply.

He raised his head and looked at her, the question of his life on his face.

“I always have thought of you as a child,” he said, “and myself as an old man. And yet—” he stretched out his arms to her—“you are the woman I love! I did not marry in my youth, because I never cared for any woman. My life has been so long and bare! God sent you into it. Must a few years separate us?”

“I know nothing of years,” she said, with a soft little laugh.

It was not Johnny’s limp arms that clasped her, nor Johnny’s uncertain lips that met her own. For one minute, the world was full of a strong rapturous love that shut her out from all trouble. She sobbed a little, and then the tears came.

“I have been so lonely since mother died,” she said. “Sometimes I hoped you cared for me, and then I was not sure.”

“You shall never be lonely again.”

The closed door creaked. Antonia pushed him from her, and stood, dazed, looking at him and then at the door.

“Oh, I had forgotten!” she said, in hoarse whisper. “You must never speak to me again as you have done. I can never marry. I can be nothing to you—nothing!”

Doctor Cabell was a physician, as well as a lover.

“Sit down, Antonia,” he said, soothingly. “You do not know what to say. The nervous strain of these last months has been more than you could bear. Do not think nor worry any more; you are mine now.”

She stood, listening intently to him, but keeping her eyes on the door. It moved slightly.

“Go!” she cried. “Never come back—never think of me again!”

“What do you mean? What bar is there between us?” As he said this, he came gently closer, in doubt whether the girl’s reason were not actually shaken.

“There is a bar as strong as death.”

“You have said you loved me. After that, nothing will force me to give you up, unless”—a sudden startled doubt in his eyes—“another man has a prior claim on you.”

Her childish features grew rigid as she stared at him, nodding assent.

“Is this true, Antonia?”

“It is true.”

“There is someone in that room, besides Sinty. Who is it?”

“It is a man to whom I owe love and care. I try to give it to him—God knows I do! Now go—only go!”

More than once, in Doctor Cabell’s experience, he had known girls as innocent and young as Antonia to yield to some mad infatuation and marry men who afterward became their tyrants. Could the child have fallen into such a trap?

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Let me know what I have to face.”

“No—you can do nothing; I am bound for life. Every minute you stay will only add to my load. Oh, go—go!”

She almost forced him to the door, and, without a word of farewell, closed it behind him.

Doctor Cabell’s usual prompt decision forsook him. He paced aimlessly up and down the road. Should he force the door and discover who and what it was that had mastered the girl? A man to whom she owed love? There had been unexplained absences since her mother’s death. Could any villain—

He came toward the house, resolved on forcing an entrance, when the shadow of a man crossed the curtain—a tall, thin form, walking with tottering steps. Antonia’s little figure passed across the curtain, too. She came up to him, put her arm in his to support him: he stooped, and their lips met.

Doctor Cabell, dumb to the heart, turned into the road and walked slowly homeward.

Miss Cabell’s breakfast was late, the next morning. The Doctor had made his round of early visits and returned to his study before she seated herself at the urn in the dining-room. Johnny, who lived in the village, came in for a cup of coffee, and Miss Cecelia Blynn presented herself, the tip of her nose blushing scarlet from the morning wind.

“I knew you would be late, dear Miss Jane,” she said, “and so I took a run to Emma Wood’s, to borrow her pattern of Paradise: you must have a quilt made by it. But such news! The village is done with the Akerses at last.”

“What has happened?” asked Miss Cabell, with a warning glance at Johnny, whose white hand shook as he dropped the sugar into his cup.

“Gone—bag and baggage! Antonia and old Sinty drove, early this morning, over to Canterbury, to take the train for Philadelphia. And with them—hear to this, Johnny!—with them was a man whom nobody in town ever saw before. Ike Purly, who drove them over, says he has no doubt that Antonia is engaged or married to him, from the care she gave him. The man was evidently recovering from the effects of an prolonged debauch.”

“Poor girl!” said Miss Jane, who felt she could now afford to be merciful. “Even she does not deserve to be united to an intemperate man.”

“Even she?” thundered Johnny, rising in hot wrath. “She is one of the purest and sweetest of God’s creatures!” He banged the door after him, as he went out.

Before the day was over, however, he found the storm of gossip unpleasant to face, and determined to run up to Dover, for a ball to which he had been invited. There he met Miss Gibson, whose waltzing was so famous. He married her after a week’s courtship, and they were undoubtedly the handsomest couple in Kent County.

The winter was dull for Miss Cabell. She wrote to her old friends in Wilmington that Gilbert, who had always been taciturn, had become almost dumb: that he was now wholly absorbed in his profession. “Kind enough, but totally unsympathetic.” She could not resist their entreaties to come up to the Gurney House and patronize a church bazaar, at which all the beauty and fashion of the city would appear.

Two weeks after she had gone, Doctor Cabell met Miss Blynn, one day, on the street.

“Did you know Antonia has returned?” she said. “And old Sinty? And the man? He was so weak. Ike told me he had to be carried into the house. But he cursed Antonia all the way. Gracious! what an escape Johnny made!”

Doctor Cabell sat over his fire late, that night. He knew that Antonia was in need of him and would send for him. The summons came, near morning. He entered the house just before dawn. She met him at the door, pale from long loss of sleep.

“It is too late,” was her greeting. “He is dying. No doctors have been able to help him, but you can perhaps save him pain.”

Doctor Cabell worked with his patient for hours. He was the wreck of a strong handsome man, of more than middle age. He fought death step by step with an impotent fury, cursing the Doctor, the old negress, and Antonia more than all. Only once, with a gleam of sanity, he said to her, quietly: “Poor Nony! You’ve done your duty to me, little woman!”

When at last he was dead, and Antonia’s long task was done, old Sinty carried her out and laid her unconscious in her own room.

An hour later, Doctor Cabell went to her.

“Who was this man, Antonia?” he said. “I must answer the questions that will be asked.”

“He was my father, George Akers. He deserted my mother. She heard of his death in California. After she was gone, he came back to me. He had served out a term of fifteen years in prison for manslaughter. You understand now why I—I—”

“Why you could not ‘bring disgrace on me,’ I think you said. Why, child, you brought misery worse than death: I thought you were his wife. I will go now and silence the village; afterward—”

The village was too proud and fond of Doctor Cabell to disobey his edicts. “That Akers girl” became a heroine. As to what happened afterward, Miss Cabell is the best authority:

“When I read Gilbert’s letter telling me that he was about to bring a new mistress into the house, and that mistress Antonia, I felt as if I had received a mortal blow. He assured me my home was always open to me. My home! under the rule of that Akers girl! I have visited them once, upon the most formal footing; but I am homeless. As for the Gurney House, the society there is becoming very mixed indeed, and the soups are atrocious. But it is by trials and humiliations that we reach perfection in this vale of tears!”[2]

Notes

1. Hercules, a figure in Roman mythology, is known for his heroic endeavors and great strength; Antinous (c.111-130), Greek youth known for his beauty, was the lover of the emperor Hadrian and has come to symbolize homosexuality.

2. Biblical, Psalm 84:6, referring to the hardships of life that will only be escaped once one has died and gone to Heaven.

Contributor

Dublin Core

Title

"The Good-for-Nothing"March 9, 1876The Independent

Description

The Good-for-Nothing.

Tarrytown, like every other Pennsylvania village, had its great man and its town fool. People boasted of the magnitude of the one and measured themselves by the littleness of the other. In any case they were complacent. Let what might come, Tarrytown was always complacent. The great man was Judge Samuel Rice. He was never on the bench, but everybody called him Judge. The little man was Johnny Twit; baptized John, no doubt, but everybody called him Johnny. Judge Samuel stood six foot two in his stockings—gray yarn stockings. “None of yer fancy silk for me, though I’ve got two hundred thousand dollars to pay for ’em, if I like,” he used to say, slapping his breeches pocket. His head and shoulders were broad and heavy as those of his own oxen, his hair and beard long and snow-white, his voice sonorous, with a cruel creak in it like the crack of a whip. You could not find a better figure-head for a town-meeting, or for a public dinner, or for a church. For forty years he presided in all and drove the Tarrytownists here and there as he pleased. If they rebelled, he slapped his breeches pockets and bellowed and gored and trampled them down, ox-like. He was known all through the state as the public-spirited Judge Rice. He was regarded as the foundation of Tarrytown, its one underpinning. When he was taken away, the whole thing would crumble down. All this without the gift of one of his dollars to any public enterprise. He paid his taxes and church dues; but not a penny over. He paid everybody to an exact fraction; and on the ground of the money he kept in his breeches pocket he bullied all poorer men. “Look at me!” he used to roar at a town meeting. “I began without a cent, and I could buy out Tarrytown! Do I have Brussels carpets on my floors? They’re bare and my da’aters scrub ’em. Do I hand fal-lal picters on my walls? I leave picters and pianos and china jimcracks[1] to some men I could name, whose pockets are as lean as their wits. You know what they’ve got in the bank, and you know what I’ve got. There’s my argyment.”

While his own table was niggardly and his floors bare, he was always willing to squander unlimited money on his son, who lived in Ohio. Once a year he went to Columbus, to see “Tom” in the senate; would wait all day in the gallery to hear him vote, or sit in their gorgeous drawing room at night to watch Tom’s wife entertain her guests. He was apt to choose somebody to whom to confide his delight, and would nudge him and chuckle as they sat apart on the sofa: “She’s a high-flyer—Tom’s wife—I tell you! Knows how to make money go! It all comes from me. I arned every dollar of it. Began, sir, breakin’ stones for the pike. When I think how I used to work in the blazin’ sun in the buff to my waist, and look at Tom’s wife and her cloes, it shows, sir, how honesty and virtue pays in this country.”

One day the Judge died, and there was a very hurly-burly of lamentation. The papers and Tom’s wife went into mourning. The town-house was draped with black muslin. Sermons were preached, muffled drums beat, unending funeral parades went up and down. Remembering how he had fought for the dogmas of his church, how he had harried the village with his loud-mouthed merit for nigh half a century, it really did seem as if, in the words of the editor of The Standard, “Virtue ‘for a moment bade the world farewell.’”[2] At the end of a month Tom Rice withdrew his father’s money from the bank. When it was gone the gap suddenly healed over which the Judge had left, and people began to wonder if that was all that there had been of him. Was it the $200,000 in his breeches pocket that had ruled them so long? Was the public spirit and the honesty and blatant virtue a mere frothy bubble, and the money the reality?

At the end of the year nobody ever spoke of the Judge but Johnny Twit. To Johnny he was still a modern Cato, Franklin, and a smaller Washington.[3] Twit had his photograph hanging up in his office, with an autograph letter below. “A good and great man,” he would say, shaking his little bald head. “I am proud to have known him.” Johnny, people said, was more “cracked” than ever.

Tarrytown was settled by thrifty, hard, Scotch-Irish stock. Not the kind of folk to have much patience with a man who had lived to be fifty-four and had not laid away a dollar; could barely manage, indeed, to keep body and soul together. It was the extent of charity in them to pass over Johnny’s shortcomings on the ground of a cracked brain. “The fellow,” they would tell you, “had good birth (a matter of weight in Tarrytown) and good education. He studied law. Why, Johnny could give you the points of a case or precedents as well as any man in Tarrytown. But he’d take to chasing the subject through the books like a hound after a hare, and there was an end of all practical good of him for a month. Or, if you wanted a deed, he’d go to ferreting out the title back to the tomahawk claims, and to hunting up the history of all the owners.” It was better than a play, he said, to make searches for a title. Business soon left that office, of course. The office was a large, whitewashed room, lined with rough shelves of old books, a stove in one corner, where Johnny cooked his own meals, a neat bed behind a check curtain, and, scattered miscellaneously, two or three dogs, some of the neighbors’ children, a dozen tame canaries, a goldfinch, and a parrot. Outside there was a queer old garden, full of herbs and roses, a poultry-yard, tamed squirrels, pigeons, more dogs. It was but additional proof of Johnny’s half-idiocy to the townspeople that he chose to spend his life studying queer books, in tongues that nobody understood, to making money. As to the animals and children, they took to him naturally, as though he were one of themselves.

Johnny was always busy. Besides his books, he brewed from his herbs draughts, salves, lotions, for almost every disease, which he gave away. (If he sold them, they would have lost virtue.) If anybody was sick or dead, Johnny was sent for at once. Nobody was so good a nurse. Nobody was so tender in trouble as the apple-cheeked, bald-headed little man. He was a sort of foster-father to the whole village; had kept a record of births, deaths, etc., for many years. Of course, nobody had the least respect for Johnny. He was queer, flighty, had an absurdly high opinion of every living soul with whom he came in contact—saw virtue in them which only insanity could have imagined. All the village wits made a butt of him. Every Tarrytowner had an opinion of his own, fixed as that of the Pope. Johnny never offered an opinion in his life. He never said so much as that virtue was right and vice wrong. When people were sick or in trouble, and sent for him, he would sometimes pull out his old Bible, and, putting on his spectacles, read in his humble, squeaking voice, usually from the Gospel of St. John. I remember how comical we children thought him, with his feet on the rung of his chair, and his bald head and round, boyish face. But there was a wonderful pathos in his voice, and what he read was real to us.

All this was long ago. Johnny died soon after the Judge. Books, dogs, birds were all scattered. “A good-for-nothing fellow,” said the smart young druggist who had just opened a shop. “Live all his life here, and his whole belongings sold for ten dollars. Fact! I was at the vendue.”

But there was not a man or woman in Tarrytown who did not feel a sudden gap in their everyday life, out of which something good and helpful had gone. And there was not a child who has not now, in middle age, a tender and grateful memory of poor Johnny.

Notes

1. Jimcrack or gimcrack is a cheap, showy object.

2. A phrase used frequently from the Revolutionary era to Byron’s poetry; may be a version of Biblical verse, such as Acts 18:21.

3. Cato the Younger (95-46 BC), Roman statesman; Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and George Washington (1732-1799), U.S. “Founding Fathers.” Each figure is considered a symbol of moral integrity.

Contributor

Dublin Core

Title

Description

The schoolmaster and his wife, after morning meeting was over, took their way as usual down Prout’s Lane, and across the hill homeward. The path was narrow; the dominie[2] walked first. He [made] a remark at long intervals to his wife behind him, but without looking back.

“Squire wasn’t out. Reckon his lumbago’s worse?”

“’S likely.”

“The doctor had his little grandchild with him, I suppose his daughter has come for the summer.”

“I reckon she has.”

There was a long silence after that, broken only by the buzz of the bees in the red clover and the ch’k-k of the grasshoppers through the hot grass. The old man stopped, as he always did on Sunday, to see how much the corn in the lower field had grown during the week, and to gave meditatively at the pigs in their pen. But Mrs. Holmes had no thoughts today for the pigs or corn. She walked with her head bent on her breast, almost forgetting to hold up her skirt of her Sunday merino[3] out of the grass. There had been a strange preacher that day—an old man with a quick, sharp tone like the call of a horn to wandering sheep—very different from Father Langley’s prolonged drowsy hum. One or two of his sentences rang in Ann Holmes’ ears.

“While you live, live! You wrap yourselves in selfishness and fat content as in grave-clothes before you are dead. The world is full of your brothers, starving, cold, ignorant. Go to them! You owe them service to the last breath of your life.”

Mrs. Holmes had asked the doctor’s wife anxiously what she thought of the sermon as they came out of the churchyard.

Mrs. Perry shook her head contemptuously.

“He’s one of these half-cracket, sensation preachers. What has Amity township to do with the starving poor? We keep up our almshouse well. Let the big towns see to their own paupers!”

Ann was comforted for the moment, but she remained uneasy. That hint about the grave-clothes seemed a personal hit at herself. Could the man know—?

She hurried past the schoolmaster when they reached their own gate, going up the spotless board walk with beds of geraniums and roses on either side, to the side door. She could not resist a complacent glance at those beds. Not a weed; the brown earth sifted fine and smooth! There was no such garden in the village; no kitchen was so exquisitely neat, no parlor so speckles and prim. Surely, her conscience told her, she was a good Christian woman, fulfilling her duty, and had no cause for the wrench and misery of soul which she felt just now.

She went up the stairs to her own chamber, laid off her bonnet carefully, and then unlocked a drawer in the press.[4] She did not need to lift the white towels. She knew perfectly well what was pinned up in them. The underclothing of snowy linen, the worked flannels, the fine woolen shroud. She had put every stitch in them. Could the man have known?

Every matron in Amity had her “funeral suit” provided. It was a matter of pride to them, just as Mrs. B. in Boston would delight in her old Satsuma or her Corot.[5] The Amity people gloried in their new cemetery. The Holmes had their lot like the rest; a narrow one, for there were only two to be buried in it. Ann had her choicest roses set out there. She had directed in her will every detail of the trimming of her coffin.

She thrust her hand under the shroud now and pulled out a little bag of gold coin. They were the savings of years; pennies scrimped out of clothes, milk, meat. They were to pay for the handsome granite monument, “Erected to the Memory of Daniel Holmes and Ann his wife.”

“While you live—live!”

She dropped the bag as if some one spoke at her back, locked the drawer and went back down stairs.

The “piece” was spread as usual on Sunday noons; flaky bread, clover-scented honey, delicious pies. Ann, as she cut the pie, was comforted by a sense of spiritual well-being. No woman made such crust in Amity. No woman was more faithful at meeting, at Sunday-school, at missionary society. In what had she come short? her starved soul demanded of its Maker. Every duty, great and small, had been well finished.

Mrs. Holmes was fifty-five years of age, but she was used to speak of herself as near her grave. She twisted up her hair in a wisp, and wore the scuttle bonnets proper to old age. The work of life, she held, was finished for her and Daniel. They had paid for the farm, so that when one died the other was sure of a maintenance; the farm and house were in perfect order, the cemetery lot was bought. The money for the monument was a kind of frilling embroidery on this perfected life, the handsome flourish to the signature which closed the deed.

As she sat pouring out the tea, thinking these things over, her husband “reckoned” again that the squire’s lumbago was bad, and that the doctor’s daughter was at home. Then he yawned drearily, and fell asleep in his chair in the sun.

How much of his time he spent in yawning and sleeping! Yet thirty years ago Daniel Holmes was an eager teacher, keeping well abreast with the knowledge and ideas of his time, living in the world of books, newspapers, music and pictures. She, too, had been a live woman then. But they had come out of town into this village, and set themselves to scrape together money to buy this farm. What was this change that had come to them? Had they been really spinning their grave-clothes out of selfishness?

Ann went to afternoon service; but she did not hear a word of Father Langley’s discourse. She was back in town; long-forgotten voices sounded in her ears. There was Dan’s brother Jack, poor fellow! She saw him plainly in the crowd. A gay, affectionate lad who might have turned out well if he had been guided! But he had married a feather-headed girl, and Ann, out of patience, had turned them both adrift.

As they walked home that evening she said to the schoolmaster, “How long is it since we heard from John, Danell?”

He did not respond at first, and when he did it was with a strained, annoyed voice.

“Twenty-six year.”

“I wish I and Abby could have hit it off together. I am ’feared that it was not right to shove them off, with neither money nor religion ‘for a staff.’”

Daniel made no reply, but An[n] understood his silence as a more bitter reproach than words.

The next morning she brought to him a small canvas bag.

“There is some money I had saved for buryin’ expenses, Danell,” she said. “I’d like to take it instead for us to spend a week in Philadelphia.”

“What tomfoolery’s that?”

“There’s no poor folks in Amity, ’n maybe we might see some there as we could give—advice to. And you could look up the libraries and museums.”

“Nonsense!”

But his eyes paused, attentive.

“And maybe we might meet John.”

“Here, put the money away! I’ll bank it,” he growled.

But four days later Amity was shaken to its centre by the news that the schoolmaster and his wife had gone for an outing to Philadelphia.

“There’s a queer customer,” whispered one of the attendants in the old Franklin Library to another a week afterwards. “He comes every day and goes from shelf to shelf breathless, as if he had not touched a book for years. Been buried in the country, I suppose.”

“And why should anybody who could live out of doors and dig, want to smell this musty leather?” grumbled the other lad, who was lean, and stooped, with an ugly cough.

He went up to Daniel, however, and helped him in his explorations.

Our country pilgrims put up at an old-fashioned inn in the lower part of the city. Daniel came back to it at night fairly panting with the triumphs of his researches. He had visited kindergartens, industrial schools and museums, where art and science were taught without charge to the poorest.

“As for the libraries, whole continents of knowledge have been discovered while I was dozing and snoring in Amity,” he exclaimed.

Ann had made her rounds among the asylums, the hospitals for children, the free classes, the crèches. Her cold gray eyes were dim and wet.

“Half the world seem to be cold and hungry, and the other half are working to warm and feed them,” she said. “And I could find nothing to do but to make fine my shroud and gravestone! But have you got any trace of John or Abby, Danell?”

“No; I doubt it’s no use, Ann.”

But as Ann woke day by day, and got her hold upon the world again, her search became more energetic. One day she came in at noon red with excitement.

“I’ve found them, Danell! That is to say, John and Abby are dead; but they’ve left three children. The oldest boy supports them, and he is that consumptive lad in the library you took such a fancy to. Come right along! Don’t’ stop for dinner! Come! Three children! And the Lord never before gave us one!”

---------

Mrs. Ann Holmes’ house is no longer the neatest in Amity. The chubby little girl of fourteen who helps her in the kitchen leaves her work and school books here and there, and the baby who tugs after Ann from morning until night drops her greasy bread and butter even in the sacred parlor, unrebuked.

“What’s a clean floor compared with the flesh coming on to their bones?” she asks triumphantly. “Look at Albert! He’s another boy. He’s a born farmer. That library was killing him.”

“I’ll have no abuse of libraries,” Daniel says. “I’m going up for study twice a year. It doesn’t do to lose your hold on the world. You’ve got to keep step while you live.”

“Y-es,” Ann replies absently. She is looking out a hymn simple enough for Abby to understand, and after that she is going to make some flannel petticoats for baby before the cold weather comes. They are cut out and folded neatly in her basket, and the drawer upstairs which held her fine shroud is empty.

Notes

1. Originally published in the Congregationalist. I have been unable to locate a copy of that issue, so I have used its reprint in Zion’s Herald.

2. Scottish term for a schoolmaster.

3. A fine woolen material similar to cashmere.

4. A clothes press or armoire.

5. Satsuma is pottery exquisitely painted in glazes and gold; Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), French painter of landscapes and portraiture.

Dublin Core

Title

Description

I remember an odd story about a will, which, I believe, I have never told before. It is not long, though it covers a good many years.

One winter evening I was entertaining a few friends at dinner. Some Parisian notoriety was among them, and my housekeeper, intent on upholding the cuisine of old Virginia against all France, outdid herself. The truffle-sauce was as delicate as Fouillet’s own, the Perigord—pardon me—but I am fond of good eating.[1] What wise man since Solomon is not?[2]

Just as the Clicquot was beginning to fire the eyes and mellow the laughs about the table, Pine, who had been playing major-domo in the servant’s hall, came behind my chair and slipped a note under my plate.[3] “Pierse’s Jake fetched it. From his young mistress.”

I saw Bob Johns, who was sitting a little way down the table, prick up his ears at this. The clatter of voices and glasses was loud enough for Pine to continue his whisper, unheard, as I furtively glanced at the note. “Jake says the old man’s bent on makin’ his will, right off. Fur de Lord’s sake go, Mars’ John. It’s de debbil of a night, though.” And he slipped off to get overcoat and wrappings.

Pine, a portly dignitary of forty, knew my business about as well as I did myself. Far better than that lazy, handsome scamp, Bob Johns, who had been loitering out four years in my office, becoming a rare critic of hock and champagne, and the last pas seul at the theatre.[4] Yet, though Bob’s knowledge of the law was of the flimsiest, he was relished even among the old limbs of the courts about my table for his keen wit and hearty good feeling. “A sad dog, Bob!” they would say, “just like his father.” True enough! like his father in the flushed genial face, the open hand, the big foolish heart, whose weakness every beggar in Richmond knew how to swindle; to end like his father, too, it might be; life and hope wrecked in drink; to be remembered, years after, as “poor Bob,” with censure and tenderness such as no faultless morality would have earned. For reasons that I had, I handed him the note when I had read it, in answer to his eager look. I ought to go; that was certain; so, with a mournful glance at the jolly faces around the cloth, I pushed old Tom Berkley into my chair, and excused myself for an hour.

When I came down into the hall, a few minutes after, I found Bob Johns ready booted and spurred. I laughed inwardly. “Well, Bob, does old Pierse want to consult you about his will?”

He stammered, and grew red. “I thought, sir—”

“You thought little Hester might need consolation, so mean to offer your ghostly aid? Well, boys will be boys. Help me on with this shawl here, and get along with you.”

We rode off together. A dull, drizzly night. Bob’s thoughts of little Hester may have kept him warm, but I found it decidedly uncomfortable, and just like old Pierse to choose such a night for his preparation for the next world. A word of explanation, that you may understand the exigencies of the case as well as Bob and I did.

Some five years before, this same reputable old Pierse had married a widow from Loudon county: a certain Mrs. Wray with one daughter, Hester. The widow was rich, had been an heiress in her girlhood, when, by-the-way, she had known and loved this man Pierse, but had been forced to marry Wray by her father. She never cared for him, nor his daughter; in less than a year after his death, met and married her old flame Pierse. She was one of these whey skinned, pale eyed women, whose loves and hates go down into the grave with them. She did love old Pierse enough to make me doubt her sanity. It was a perpetual miracle to me: but there never was a Bottom yet who could not find a Titania to “stroke his amiable ears.”[5] Well, the woman died at last, and then one would have hoped there would be an end of her lunatic coddling. Far from it. She was a native of Baton Rouge, and her property doubly ensured to her by settlement, and the laws of Louisiana, where women have more “rights” than ever Abby Kelly claimed.[6] To justify the title of her sex to an inherent sense of justice, the woman devised her property entire to her husband, leaving Hester utterly dependent on his good will. I don’t say old Pierse was a scoundrel. I only quote Shakespeare, and say Titania had been “enamored of an ass.”[7] A pompous, fat animal—perpetual high grand of braggarts—if any seeds of brain or feeling were in the man originally, turtle and brandy had choked them out. Like all braggarts, the man could be led by a child with flattery. Now Hester was no flatterer. A little girl with a low, loving voice, it is true, but a most decisive way of putting down her small foot, and a hearty contempt of all humbug. The two were not colleagues—how could they be? Besides Pierse knew how thoroughly public indignation had been roused on behalf of the girl, and disliked her accordingly; submitted her to numberless vexations—not the least of which was the introduction into the house of a mulatto slave as housekeeper, a woman whom the girl had every reason to fear and shrink from. Some two years back Pierse had made a will, leaving the property to his brother, then in Cuba. I knew of it, and for Hester’s sake had brought every influence to bear on the wretch to induce him to alter it, but vainly. In the last year gout had rendered him helpless. Hester had nursed him for the memory of her dead mother; whatever kindly feeling was buried in the mass of flesh had kindled into life, and day after day I hoped he would do her a late justice. You comprehend now why I hurried to obey his summons? Bob Johns’ interest in the house perhaps you can guess at. Poor little downtrodden Hester was a favorite of mine, and for her sake as well as his own, I wished Bob would turn into a slower, surer path through life; but talking, as usual in such cases, did no good.

The girl came out to meet me on the steps, her blue eyes swelled with crying; the old fellow had been kind to her since he thought himself dying, and a few words of kindness are enough to melt hearts like Hester’s. However, when she saw Bob, her grief abated in a series of intense blushes and shy dimples about her mouth. That gallant young fellow, whom half the girls in Henrico county were in love with, was quite awkward and silent, which made me believe him entirely in earnest, and think all the better of him. I left them in the parlor, and went up to the chamber, where old Pierse was growling and swearing to the confusion of spirit of half a dozen blacks.

Pierse, his growls, or his oaths have nothing to do with my story; so suffice it to say that the will was made, leaving the property, as was just, to Hester, with the exception of some legacies, and was duly witnessed by the doctor and Jones, the overseer. I heard Jones, rough old rowdy as he was, mutter a thank God as he scrawled down his name. I kissed Hester’s thin cheek heartily as I came down, and marched Master Bob off with me. The fellow was so lost in rapture or sulkiness that he said nothing the whole way into town. Never once thought of the will, I honestly believe. One thing annoyed me. Pierse kept the will himself, “To have a hold on the girl,” he said, and there was no calculating on his moody fits.

He lived four weeks after this. All negrodom was alive with tales of his whims and “debblishness,” which Pine occasionally forgot his high-breeding enough to repeat, when the younger servants were out of hearing, coupled with sympathy for “dat chile lef’ to such a ‘God-forsaken’ wretch.” At last one morning, as Jim was shaving me, Pine came in fresh from the morning paper, announcing that, “Bress de Lord, old Pierse was done gone at last.”

I glanced over the notice of “the lamented death of our highly respected fellow-citizen” while at breakfast, and then drove out to the Pierse plantation. There was a crowd before me; undertakers, negroes down stairs, Hester’s friends (she had true ones of her own, and the heiress of two plantations and eight hundred slaves was likely to have enough). Pierse’s first attorney, up in the drawing-rooms, and bustling women everywhere. I sent for uncle Joe, who had been the constant attendant of the dead man, and was his only mourner, I fancy.

“Is the will safe, uncle?” I asked.

“Tink so, massa,” he said, anxiously. “Mars’ kep it in dat black box um had under his bed, but um were cranky—beyond belief at de lass. Lord knows what um’s done.”

I saw something weighed on Joe’s mind and beckoned him aside. He drew something mysteriously from his pocket.

“When ole mars’ died, dis key wor in his trousers’ pocket. It opens dat curous box—an I tought twos best to make sure—ef de will’s dar, which um good Lord grant!”

The box was curious, as Joe said, a black casket lined with asbestos, fastened by a peculiar lock. I remembered the old man had put the will in it, looking at some bank bills it contained with a chuckle. Brady, the lawyer Pierse had formerly employed, joined me in the library, where a funereal lamp burned dismally.

“Rumor says you have a will made lately, Mr. Page,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it. A more diabolical piece of injustice than the one I drew up it would be hard to find. The whole property went to his brother. I mention this, sub rosa, of course.[8] Though it matters little, as the deed is null.”

I confess Brady and I, however, grew a little impatient for the funeral to be over. Pierse, in the imbecility of his last hours, had gabbled incessantly of the will to the blacks about him, one hour threatening to burn it, the next praying maudlin blessings on Hester’s head.

The funeral was over at last, and with Brady and Dr. Folke, who was appointed administrator, I proceeded to search for the will. Hester had been removed to the house of an old Quaker lady the day before. The demure Friend Cox, however, had left “the maiden Hester” asleep, and driven over to see if “justice had been done by that ungodly man.” The good old lady checked herself at this unwonted outburst, and smoothed her forehead and lavender silk at the same time, seating herself placidly in the sunniest corner of the drawing-room. Just as we were beginning our search, a buggy drove up to the door, and Mr. Sholter was announced. Now Sholter was one of the wiriest, wiliest, lowest pettifoggers in Richmond. Brady drew himself back into his iciest politeness, when this intruder bustled in with outstretched hand: and my own welcome was hardly more genial.

“A sad loss! Sad loss!” he said, summoning a face of woe to cover his embarrassment.

Nobody spoke.

“Have you claims against the personal property, Mr. Sholter?” I asked, seeing that the others waited for me to speak. “Otherwise—our business at present is urgent, and—”

“Precisely,” with an ill-concealed smirk. “My business is yours, I am proud to say. I am commissioned by Mr. Samuel Pierse, brother of the deceased, now in Cuba, to attend to his interests in the matter. A will in his favor, I am led to believe, is held by Mr. Brady.” Brady bowed haughtily. “I am also informed that suspicions are entertained that the deceased made a later disposition of his property. Eh! Correct? 'Well, well, we’ll see to that! Unless the testator altered his mind and burned it. Our departed friend was not a rock in his intentions. Ha! ha! More like St. Reuben than St. Peter; d’ye take, gentlemen? I must have my little joke,” rubbing his hands.[9] “Come, let’s to business. Most happy to be associated with the first members of the Richmond bar,” etc., etc.

“Never mind!” I laughed to Brady, who was chafing up to his usual exploding point; “we’ll have done with him presently!” and so led them to the old man’s chamber, going directly to the corner where the box always had stood.

It was not there.

Let me cut my story short. The box was gone; neither chamber nor house held it. There is no need to tire you with our dismay nor rage, nor Sholter’s triumph hidden under a condoling face Well, poor wretch! No wonder he rejoiced! The agency falling into his hands was a good, fat living to him. The box was gone.

Uncle Joe said that the old man had examined the papers it contained two nights before his death, and then hid the casket carefully under the mattress of the bed; since then he had not seen it. We resolved to keep the loss quiet for a day or two, until a thorough search was made. Meanwhile, Brady, in obedience to the power of attorney held by Sholter, delivered to him and the administrators named therein the former will.

“I will grant you, Mr. Page,” said Sholter, condescendingly, “a day’s grace to produce the document before I proceed to record the will.”

I could have gnashed my teeth at the fellow; but I only bowed and answered, “All right. The document will be forthcoming. I do not believe it is burned.”

“There I differ with you, sir,” he said, with his detestable smirk.

We passed out on the portico. The house servants crowded about me. “Is it all safe, Marster Page?” said uncle Joe, acting as spokesman. “Who’d we belong to, marster?” The old negro’s voice was husky.

“It will be all safe, uncle,” I said, cheerfully.

“You are sanguine, Mr. Page,” sneered Sholter. “If the estate becomes the property of Mr. Pierse, I doubt not these hands will be transferred to the Georgia market.”

I watched Sholter bowling down the park, whistling as he went. I suspected almost to certainty that he had been employed by Pierse in Cuba to obtain possession of the box by clandestine means. But how to prove it? I turned with Brady and entered the drawing-room, where the old Quaker lady was pacing the floor, trying to look calm.

“We will hope for the best,” I said, evasively. She looked keenly at us; then began slowly to pin on her shawl and bonnet. “I must return to Hester,” dropping the subject instantly; though I saw her anxious eyes.

As I went out to help her into the old-fashioned coach, she leaned forward out of the door, her smooth check coloring like a girl’s of sixteen. “Friend John, is the young man, Robert Johns, betrothed to Hester? I ask not for idle curiosity only.”

I smiled. “I suspected such a thing to be possible, Friend Cox.” She looked more anxious. “You do not like the idea? He is a clever boy—generous, talented.” She shook her head.

“A noble young man, as God made him; but as he has made himself—the wine-cup, thee knows?—‘at the last, it stingeth like an adder.’”[10] I was silent. I know the page in her own story that made her cheek grow pale now and her gray eyes fill with tears.

“I think better of Robert,” I said. “His worst fault is indolence. Remember the education the sons of our well-blooded, poor families receive. Besides, as the husband of Hester Wray, he will have enough to do to control the plantations.”

“When he cannot control himself? Oh! Friend John, thee had ever a weak side for the follies of the young!” And the old lady drove away.

CHAPTER II.

Two days after this, late in the evening, I mounted my old hack and rode out to Friend Cox’s plantation. Slowly, reluctantly; for I was the bearer of ill tidings. A bright fire burned in the library, flashing jets of light on the gray silken curtains, the plain rich furniture and books, the group of faces gathered about it. The mild eyes of the old Quaker were the only ones that had any tinge of sadness. Bob Johns’ face, with the brown hair pushed back, fairly lit up the room with its hearty glee. Why should it not? Life had always been pleasant—opened brighter and warmer now. No day had thwarted him of all these years gone. And Bob’s heart and brain were steeped in the most crimson flush of love just then, sitting on a low foot-stool at Hester’s feet. She had been singing—she had a low, chirping voice, Hester, very pleasant to hear—singing some quaint old Scotch song about the “Land o’the leal.”[11] Melancholy enough! Yet its sadness deepened the joy, somehow, for the two young hearts. It touched the old one, too, if I mistake not, notwithstanding the “testimony” of her sect against music; for the face was flushed coming to meet me. A quiet, happy breath pervaded the room. I settled down in it among them, uncertain how to break my news.

Perhaps Friend Cox saw it on my face and thought it had better be broken abruptly.

“Thee comes to say that the will is lost, friend John?” she said.

“I came to say it,” looking in the fire, avoiding all eyes. “Gone. Sholter, as proxy for Samuel Pierse, takes possession of the plantations tomorrow.”

“And the people?” cried Hester, starting up.

“They are all to be transferred to the place in Georgia.”

“Sold?”

“No; not immediately.”

The girl burst into tears, pacing the floor. “My own people! They were kind to me when no one else was kind—not even my own mother! Old Maumer! that nursed me in her arms! They shall not go! They shall not!”

“Can nothing be done?” said Friend Cox, half-crying.

“Nothing! I proposed taking the house servants off Sholter’s hands; but he would not.”

“Hester forgets her own loss,” she said, in a whisper.

“I do not,” the girl stopped. “It is unjust. God knows I feel that! I am no meek saint. But I can help myself. What can they do—my poor people? You think me silly, perhaps; but they were all I had to love for years!” her face growing crimson as she looked at Bob.

A silence followed. Bob leaned his head on the window-pane. The girl paced to and fro, controlling herself.

“Hester,” said the Quaker, at last, “I see but one hope for thy house people. It may be that, in time, this man Pierse will relent, and dispose of them to me or friend John here. Then it will all be right. Thou art my child now, thee knows?”

“Except my share in her,” I said.

Hester was near the old lady. She turned impulsively and threw her arms about her. “You know I thank you both!” Her voice was clear enough now. “But, listen to me. I have made up my mind. My father, nor his daughter, ever took back a promise, and I have made one in my heart to my people. I can not be dependent on you—on any one. I will earn my own bread, Friend Cox, and, after a time, I’ll buy them back.” Friend Cox smiled and smoothed her hair. But I saw the fashion in which the girl’s lips closed, and knew she would keep her word.

Bob Johns pushed away the curtain and came up to the hearth. I don’t think he remembered that I or the old lady were there: he saw, spoke to Hester only.

“Do you know what I think of myself, Hetty?” he said, in a tone whose bitterness seemed to come scalding out of his heart. “Do you see me standing here—a man of twenty-five ignorant, penniless years, and chances squandered, when I ought to have been strong to help you and these wretched souls? Squandered! God help me!” He covered his face with his hands. She put hers trembling on his shoulder. “I’ve a strong arm yet, and a strong will!” he broke out, catching the little hand. “You work! Never! if there’s any trace of manhood left in me! I can dig, if nothing better! Hetty! Hetty! Make a man of me! Let me work for you! Give yourself to me now! You shall see me other than the idle wretch I have been. Only believe in me—believe in me!”

“I do—I always did, Robert. You shall work for me. But not together. Let us each try our strength first. Let me do something for my people.” The girl’s strength was giving way. She grew pale, trembling.

“Come, child,” said Friend Cox, “thee has borne enough. To-morrow we will talk this matter over,” and led her from the room.

Bob Johns and I soon after took our leave. Friend Cox had upbraided me with too lax a manner in dealing with young people. I thought this a good time to reform. So as we rode down the avenue, I began in a tone calculated in itself to carry conviction.

“Young man, you might have been prepared for this. I have warned you of the helpless, inefficient thing you were making of yourself, time and again, but to no purpose. A more stiff-necked, hardened youth in following his own idle fancies never fell under my control. What can I do now?”

“Well, uncle John,” said Bob, turning his face with a miserable smile, “you might as well just call me ‘Bob’ again, and let me work out my own salvation. Little Hetty’s tears have preached more to me to-night than all your counsel.”

“Bob, you’re a reprobate,” I answered. “However, we’ll try and have you admitted next month, and I can throw a good deal in your way the first term.”

Somehow I had no doubt of Bob’s earnestness and perseverance, nor was I disappointed. He “took hold,” as the Pennsylvanians say, of work and study, gave up wine and cards with scarcely an effort. After all, a man must have stimulant. Bob had found the purest earthly strength-giver; the hope of working for a heart that loved him.

She did love him, little Hetty. Loved him enough to work at her task cheerfully, trustfully. She worked hard, no shrinking, or shirking, or make believe. She was employed as a teacher in Richmond, and a good thorough little teacher she made by-the-way. Friend Cox would not give her up altogether, so kept her with her; and every dollar the girl owned was laid up for the one great purpose, to bring back her “people” to their old home.

CHAPTER III.

Years passed. Strange enough, you think, that two true, honestly loving hearts should be kept apart for years by the want of dollars and cents. Yet I have known such things happen more than once in novels, if not in real life.

Now comes the unusual part of my story. Immediately after the property passed into the hands of Samuel Pierse and his agent, the negroes were sent, as I before stated, to Georgia, and the house offered for rent. An Alabamian planter and his family took it, who were spending the winter in Richmond. He leased it, he informed me, for two years. 1 was surprised, therefore, when I met him in the reading-room of one of the hotels a month after and learned that he had removed to town. “The house was unpleasant.” Very soon after another tenant occupied it; but only for a few weeks. Another followed, and another. Strange stories began to be bruited about of noises and lights unnatural, and not to be accounted for by any rational theory.[12] The negroes talked; the white tenants themselves, half-ashamed, whispered mysteriously, said it was nothing, but presently decamped. Sholter was in despair. Satan himself was in the house, he said. Other people said it was only the ghost of old Pierse. To make a long story short, things went from bad to worse, until the house was utterly deserted a year after Pierse’s death.

So it stood for about five years. In the meantime Bob Johns had been gradually taking his place among the reliable thorough members of the Virginia bar. I helped him to practice, of course; so did Brady; so did everybody. But he helped himself most. Earnest, eager, throwing himself into every cause as if the cause were his own, and gaining every day a deeper, more subtle knowledge of the science of jurisprudence, Bob Johns bade fair to rank among our highest jurists. He came to me one day, as I was leaving the office, and leaned over the back of my chair in his old boyish way. “Uncle Page,” for he had a fashion of calling me this when anything touched him, “uncle Page, wish me joy!”

I looked up, and said, “Hester has relented?”

“Not altogether. She will be my wife; but she will persist in helping me bring back the servants. God knows when we will be able to accomplish it. Hetty had a scrawl from uncle Joe last week, that would touch your heart. We’ll have to struggle hard enough, but we’ll get on, I don’t fear.” Neither did I, looking in his face.

The wedding I learned was to be in a month. It so happened, that very night, that I was riding out past the Pierse plantation. I called Pine up to me as we reached the house.

There never was a more arrant coward, I well knew, than Pine. His horse kept in advance of mine a few paces out to the country house where I was going to dine. Coming home, I was joined by Brady. We jogged along together, slowly, for the road was muddy. Arriving near the Pierse house, I perceived the light again, and pointed it out to him. Brady was a young man, reckless, and, to be honest, excited by our host's champagne.

“They say that house is haunted, Mr. Page,” he said; “did you know? May I never die if I don’t go up and have a bout with old Pierse’s ghost!”

He turned his horse to the roadside, hitched him to the fence and began to cross the field.

“Come back, Fred,” I cried. But he would not. “Well then, I’m with you,” I said, and followed, determined to see it out.

What would the junior members of my law-school have said if they had seen me lumbering over a stubble-field at midnight in search of a ghost? However, they did not see it, and impelled by some boyish whim breaking out under my gray hairs. I pushed on, followed by Pine, his teeth chattering. “Gor-a-mighty,” he said, “old mars’ done cracked! Hope he'll pay for dis in his gouty toe!”

We readied the house at last. Brady scrambled up the porch and peeped in the windows.

“Old Pierse has met with congenial company, if his ghost is about,” he whispered, coming down. “Though I thought the woman led him such a termagant dance as he wouldn’t care to repeat.”

“What woman, Brady?”

“The mulatto—don’t you recollect?—that he kept as housekeeper, and who ruled the old wretch with a rod of iron.”

“Impossible. He sold her a year before he died to a Louisiana trader.”

“Ef he did, Mars’ John,” said Pine, taking courage, when he found the conversation was reasonably un-diabolic, “she comed back. Ole Kit you mean? Fore old Pierse died she was hangin round the swamps, they say, an I heard got in an saw him once when none knowed it but Jake. After the rumpus bout dat box he wor feared to tell.”

The same thought struck us all. Pine, forgetting his fears and rheumatism, climbed up and peeped in. “It’s Kit,” he said, descending. “She’s sittin’ in style there.”

“Mr. Page,” said Brady, “will you ride into town and bring out a couple of policemen? I will be better able to keep watch if she have any accomplices.”

An hour after Kit and a big strapping boy, her son, were safe in custody. The boy was recognized as Beefsteak Jim, a notorious thief in the neighborhood. Under cover of the reputation of the house as haunted, the woman had now occupied it for years unharmed.

While the magistrate was committing them to jail, Brady and I held a short consultation in my office, determining on what, course to pursue with the woman, to ascertain if she were an accomplice of Sholter in destroying the will.

Early the next morning we went to her cell. She was an old negro, with high cheek bones and sallow eyes, denoting Indian blood, and more than Indian craftiness.

“Before the death of your Master Pierse,” I said, (assuming the assertant scheme for extracting evidence), “you got into his chamber alone, and terrified him into confessing that his will was made and hid in a box under the mattress. You carried the box off and concealed yourself and it somewhere in the house, until after the funeral was over.” I saw by the woman’s face I had guessed correctly, and despite her oaths and curses persisted, threatening her with the utmost punishment of the law if she refused to confess. Aided by Brady and the magistrate, I succeeded in eliciting the truth. She had not acted as Sholter’s agent. We had wronged him there. Partly to revenge herself on Hester for having caused her dismissal, partly to ensure the house as her own hiding-place, she had devised and carried out the plan. Under the granaries there was a secret cellar, communicating with the house by a passage in the wall. In this cellar, of which she only was cognizant, she had concealed herself, and by means of the hidden passage had produced the unnatural lights and noises that had brought upon the house the name of “uncanny.”

“But the box?” said I, eagerly.

“What will you give me if I tell you?” she demanded, her beady eyes sharpening.

It was there safe enough; and when we opened the rusty lock with the key which I had always retained, there lay the yellow paper that gave Hester Wray her own again.

For reasons that we had, our discovery was kept a secret from every one but Sholter, and Friend Cox, who, for the first time in her life, I suppose, became a partner in a conspiracy. It was a busy month for Brady, and Pine, and me. However, our work was accomplished in time. The wedding night arrived, clear and starlit. A quiet wedding, being at the house of a friend, yet full of deep content. Little Hester’s cheeks were paler, it might be, than five years before; but the grave smile in her eyes was more constant and pure. As for Bob, he had worked long years for his Rachel, you saw the marks of that on his face; but you saw, too, that Rachel satisfied the innermost want of his soul.[13] So we had a happy, holy wedding; one which, I doubted not, the God of the orphan girl could smile on and bless.

When it was over, when the tears and good wishes were past, and the supper-table (ah! what cooks these Friends have!) attended to, I joined the group where the bride and groom stood.

“I have a favor to ask you. It’s ten o'clock now, and the train you travel in leaves at twelve. Let me carry you off to pay a visit.”

“Isn’t it a little unreasonable?” said Bob, glancing at the wondering faces.

“Not a bit. Thee must go—thee must go,” hurried out Friend Cox.

She and Brady entered the carriage with us, leaving her husband to explain. When we drove in the gates of the Pierse plantation, little Hetty began to tremble. “Why do we come here?” she asked. “It hurts me to remember my people, and to-night—”

I hurried her out of the carriage as it stopped. “Only some friends,” I said, “who want to wish you joy, Hester.”

She stopped; some quick thought flashed over her face, and, in her old impetuous way, she sprang up the steps and opened the door.

The lighted hall was crowded with black faces bright with joy. We heard a tumult of laughter, and shouts, and weeping.

“Uncle Page, this is your doing,” said Bob. “No Canada now; this is better.”

I pointed to the hall table where lay the asbestos box. Hester heeded it but little. “Oh! Maumer—all of you,” she sobbed, “thank God! You are all here to-night.”

Old uncle Joe held her by the hand. “Hush!” he said, in a husky voice, kneeling down. “Let us give thanks unto de name ob de Lord!”

Notes

1. May be a reference to Périgord truffles, one of the most expensive varieties of French black truffles from the Périgord region in southwest France.

2. See 1 Kings 3: 16-28.

3. Clicquot is a luxury champagne produced by Maison Veuve Cliquot since 1772.

4. Pas seul is French for solo dance or lone dancer.

5. Bottom and Titania are characters in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

6. Louisiana state law derives from the French Napoleonic Code. Abby Kelley (1811-1877) was an American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.

7. See Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 4.1.77-78.

8. Latin for confidential.

9. St. Reuben may be a reference to Reuben, the eldest son of Jacob, who lost his inheritance for a sexual encounter with Jacob’s concubine, Bilhah. See Genesis 35.22 and 49.4. St. Peter may be a reference to Peter as the rock on which the church will be built. See Matthew 16.13-19.

10. See Proverbs 23.32.

11. “Land o’ the Leal” is a Scottish poem and song by Lady Carolina Nairne (1766-1845).

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"Lucy Laficher"November 1884Peterson's Magazine

Description

“Lucy Laficher.”By the Author of “The Second Life,” Etc., Etc.

In 1878, Wesley Nelson opened a little shop on Tresor Street, near the Basilica, in Quebec, for the sale of stationery and newspapers. A little capital makes a large show in that kind of stock than in any other; and young Nelson had only the money he had saved from his wages as clerk on one of the small steamers plying to the lower St. Lawrence. He was a shrewd fellow, and filled his window with such a display of popular journals that the shop soon became quite a favorite.

Old Ovide Laficher, who lived at Charlesborough, had taken the boy, when he was ten years old, from the hospital at Montreal, where his mother had died, and had raised him as his own son. Wesley had been uniformly polite and good-humored in the household, as boy and man; had helped Grandmère Laficher to prepare the black bread and pot-au-feu[1] which was the unvarying meal of the family, and had worked faithfully with Ovide on the little farm until he was old enough to earn wages for himself.

But he never, by a word or look, had shown that he was grateful to the old man for rescuing him from starvation. Young Nelson was one of those men who secretly feel a grudge against anybody who places them under an obligation. He took a quiet pleasure in standing stiffly erect in this world, untouched by any of the gentle influences to which the Lafichers surrounded him. They were Canadian French. He was a New Yorker, though he was but a year old when he was taken from the States. They were poor farmers: he meant to grow rich in trade. He kept the New York journals for sale, and read them out of a vague patriotic feeling; but nobody bought them: so, after a while, he gave them up. One cannot lose thirty cents a week for patriotism.

After Wesley had opened his shop on Tresor Street, he still went out to the farm at night, bringing in his dinner in a little pail. It saved him the expense of boarding in town. It seemed to him the usual and natural custom for a father to keep his home open to his son, even after he was in business; and had not M. Laficher adopted him as his son? It was true, also, that sons in business often shared their earnings with their aged parents. But, when he thought of this, he quickly remembered that he was not M. Laficher’s son, after all—not akin to him by a drop of blood. Mr. Nelson was a cool logician, and had an eye for both sides of a question.

There was another reason why he continued to make his home with his adopted father. As soon as he was able to support a wife, he intended to marry Lucy Laficher, Ovide’s orphan niece, with whom he had grown up under one roof, as do brothers and sisters, but for whom he felt an affection that was not at all brotherly. He was a little ashamed of the heat of this affection; but, if he was tempted to reprove himself, when sometimes he grew irritable with shop, books, and customers—so uneasy was his patience to close the windows, and lock the door, and hurry out to the farm—he restored his complacent self-approval by the remembrance that such a marriage would be a most wise and prudent one, as pretty little Lucy was already an economical housewife, and besides, probably would be joint heir with himself to her uncle’s farm, which, with the homestead, he reckoned to be worth quite four thousand dollars.

Within the last three months, Wesley frequently found, at the farm, young Pierre Drouin, the youngest of the firm of Drouin Frères, carpenters in the village of Charlesborough. One day, Pierre was busy making a lattice for Lucy’s roses; the next, he was repairing the well-curb for old Ovide, and such an idle gay joking and laughing as the fellow kept up! Wesley surlily set him down as a fool, to give his labor for nothing, except to please an old man and a girl. He grew more surly when he saw how much pleased and amused Lucy was with his jokes and his work.

“When she is Madame Nelson, I’ll have no such idle vauriens[2] about the house,” he thought.

It was the remembrance of Pierre that hastened his movements, one warm evening in July, as he began to sort away the books, newspapers, and boxes of cigars, preparatory to closing the shop. No doubt the young spendthrift was on his way to the farm now, bringing his basket of grapes, the rarest and dearest to be found in the Champlain Market, for Mademoiselle Lucy. Wesley began to wonder whether old Madame Belles would not give him a bunch of her famous roses for a couple of last week’s newspapers. Then he could bring his little cadeau[3]—he also! He turned to choose a couple of the oldest papers, which nobody possibly would buy, when a shadow darkened the doorway.

“Aha, Monsieur Nelson! Going to shut up the shop? Stay a little. Smoke a cigar with me. I wish to consult you on a little matter of business.”

At any other time, Wesley would have been delighted at this familiar greeting from the Attorney Vidoux, who was one of his best customers, and who was beginning to be known as one of the shrewdest of the young men at the Quebec bar. But he was eager now to give the roses to Lucy. It was very odd. He had lived in the same house with Lucy for eighteen years, and never thought of giving her roses until that fellow, Drouin, came meddling. However, he sat down, lighted the cigar which Vidoux first bought from him and then handed back, and listened with wandering attention to the story which the young attorney told. Vidoux was apt to talk of his cases to anybody who would listen. Presently Nelson’s attention was arrested. He leaned forward, the cigar went out of his mouth, and he drummed his fingers on his knees.

“If I understand you right, this property is worth five thousand pounds?”

“Nearly that.”

“In Marseilles?”

“Yes. There will be no trouble about the title. The late owner, Louis Martel, is dead, and the property reverts to the heir of his sister, who the avocat[4] in Marseilles advises me, is supposed to be a young girl living in or near the village of Charlesborough. Now, that is why I came to you. Do you know of any such person?”

“Martel? Martel? The name has a familiar sound,” deliberated Wesley, biting the end of his cigar nervously. Of course he knew pretty little Eloise Martel, Lucy’s friend. But he was not a man who gave away information lightly. He must first see what it was worth to the market.

“I wish you would look about, and make inquiry of Monsieur Laficher,” said Vidoux. “I am employed to look up the girl, and substantiate her claim. I’ll come down on Monday, and see if you have made any discoveries.” And he rose to go.

“Not on Monday. To-morrow is my father’s fête-day,[5] and we always make a little jaunt up the river—at his expense. Always at his expense,” winking knowingly. “Not much of my money goes in celebrating fête-days, you may be sure of that. We will not return until Monday evening.”

“Very well,” said Vidoux. “On Tuesday, then. But do not put yourself to trouble. I can readily find her.” He spoke with a certain coolness, and, when he reached the street, gave himself a shake of disgust. “None of his money goes for the fête of the old man, who—ah! bah! Monsieur Wesley!”

Wesley sat, meanwhile, staring at the closed door, lost in thought. So little Louie was heiress! Five thousand pounds. She was a pretty girl, undoubtedly—a very pretty girl. It was lucky that she and Lucy were friends: it was always lucky to be intimate with the rich. Ah—h! Why not invite her to join the party, to-morrow? Why not strengthen the intimacy before she knew of her good fortune? Three days together on a boat!

He remained quiet for some time, thinking deeply; then rose, barred his shutters, and walked slowly homeward. But he was in no hurry now to reach the farm, and he did not make the trade for the roses. That affair of the roses and Pierre seemed quite a trivial matter, when compared with the real business of life. Twenty-five thousand dollars! What a pity such a sum should be wasted on a silly girl, who could do nothing with it.

“If I had a little capital,” he said, at supper that evening, “I should go directly home to New York, and plant it where it would bring in a big crop. Ah! the people in the States know how to push life.”

Lucy said nothing; but afterwards, when she was at work clipping her verbenas, and he came out and lounged near her, smoking, she looked up suddenly.

“You would leave Quebec, if you could?” she said.

“Yes. Why on earth should I stay? Every man from the States, that comes into my shop, says that the town is hopelessly dead.”

“But it is your home Wesley—” the soft blue eyes were fixed on his with an eager keen scrutiny.

“No. I am a New Yorker,” with an unconscious swagger. Lucy turned quickly away. Nelson followed her. Any hint of displeasure from her touched him sharply. “Of course, Lucy,” he said, gently taking the knife from her and cutting a flower, “I should not go alone.”

“You will find it difficult to persuade my uncle Ovide to leave Quebec,” she said, drily.

“I did not mean your uncle Ovide. However, no matter. Where is your friend Drouin this evening, by the way?”

“He is busy finishing some work in the next parish, so as to have to-morrow free. He is going with us up the Saguenay.”

“Drouin?” Wesley’s face darkened with rage. “I was not told of this.”

“Nor I,” said Lucy, calmly. “My uncle invited him to join the party.”

The young man controlled himself. After all, what did it matter? He had no reason to fear so contemptible a rival. And if Drouin was admitted to take part in the fête, there could be no objection to Eloise Martel.

When, therefore, the steamer swung from the pier, the next morning, the merry party numbered five, that were gathered on the very end of the bow, where they would catch all the wind and spray. Ovide’s portly figure made a rampart for the girls. They cowered behind him in their jaunty jackets and close-fitting caps, laughing, when a dash of rain flapped wet in his red round face; laughing at Pierre, who was sliding across the slippery deck, with chairs which he had captured for them; but smothering their laughter when Wesley, in his natty new clothes, actually fell sprawling at their feet. They were both in awe of Nelson.

“Tut, tut!” grumbled old Ovide, puffing with delight. “Don’t mind them, Pierre. They are silly girls, agog for a holiday. Where is the basket of wine? And the hamper? The fare on these boats is very good as to substantial meals, but one wants a morceau[6] now and then. Lucy, my little one, where is thy heavy coat? The last time, we nearly froze to death.”

Young Nelson was a little ashamed of the fat jovial old man, with his coarse-cloak and big baskets, who called him “mon fils,”[7] and laughed so loudly. There could be no hiding the fact that the whole party were Canadian habitants: they laughed constantly: the girls, looking down into the water, hummed, now and then, scraps of songs, into which Pierre threw a note or two of tenor, and the old man growled a melodious bass. They chattered with their neighbors, whom they had never seen before, and never would see again, as if they were old friends. They went down to every meal gay and excited, as if it were a special banquet given in their honor.

Wesley Nelson stood a little apart from them, near the groups of tourists from the States, in their waterproof cloaks and handsome traveling equipments, who were “doing the Saguenay.” How keen and successful they looked. No laughing there. Why should they laugh? Nelson thought he might be mistaken for one of them. When the boat neared Murray Bay, the square pier was crowded with the summer-boarders from that fashionable watering-place, and Nelson pushed closer into the groups of States-people, and was deaf to old Ovide’s shouts to him. At the pier lay a steam-yacht, the crew all wearing a livery of blue and scarlet.

“That is young Otger’s punt,” said one of the Americans near Nelson, to his companion. “Otger of New York, you know. I heard he was cruising about in these waters somewhere. Went to Florida in March.”

“How can he afford it?”

“Oh, his wife. Thirty thousand a year, they say. I’ve known the time Otger hadn’t twenty-five cents to pay for a ride in a bus. Had to foot it to swell parties. But he went in for a rich wife. It’s a business that pays.”

Nelson drew himself hurriedly away from the speaker, and went up to Lucy. He fancied she looked pale: had she noticed his neglect? He arranged her shawl around her shoulders, and leaned over her chair; and, as they sailed presently through the Pilgrim Islands, pointed out to her those whose names he knew. How soft was the brilliance of her blue eyes; Mlle. Martel’s were black and keen. How pretty was the outline of Lucy’s cheek, from the pink ear to the cleft chin. He had never observed that line in her face before. He would give the world to kiss her there. Would he ever kiss her? He heaved a deep sigh, lighted a cigar, and strolled back to his Americans.

Undoubtedly, all the affection of which Nelson was capable he gave to Lucy. But, in the quiet of the farm, even in the shop, he had little shop, he had little opportunity of seeing the solid value and uses of money. These countrymen of him, with their steam-yachts, their diamonds, their familiar talk of European capitals, their general air triumphant mastership, showed the results of wealth; they set new ideas to fermenting in his brain. He listened to them for awhile, and then nervously went back to Lucy.

The steamer was still ploughing its way through the misty islands, each wrapped in its airy shroud of fog, out of which green feathery trees thrust their arms, as if inviting the passing traveler to hidden fairy-nooks beneath.

“Now, if one could live on air,” said Mr. Nelson to Lucy, “or on—on love, what a home one could find here.”

Her hand was near him, on the arm of the chair. He carelessly put his over it for a moment. Never had his whole nature been so torn and divided against itself as at that moment.

Lucy drew her hand quietly away.

“You need something more to live on, Wesley, than air or love,” she said, calmly.

Was she putting him away from her finally? Here voice was kind, and there was little meaning in the words. Yet he felt that she had read him down to the lowest depths of his soul: had judged him, and was ready to give him up.

Give him up? Never. Lucy should see how he loved her: how generous and unselfish he was in offering to marry her, when five thousand pounds were lying, as it were, by the wayside, waiting for somebody to pick it up. He looked curiously at Mlle. Martel, who was opening the lunch-basket with Ovide. She was very pretty: now that her thick skin was flushed with the wind, she was almost as pretty as Lucy. There would be no harm in talking to her a little while, while he helped to unpack that basket. Ah! Wesley, if you had not crossed the deck to help unpack that basket. But he did cross it. Lucy looked after him thoughtfully a moment, and then pushed the vacant chair towards Pierre, who had been hungrily watching her for an hour.

When they all landed at Tadousac, Wesley gave his arm to Eloise, to help her up the steep walk toward the salmon-tanks. A young priest, in his long black soutane, with a pleasant kindly face, was leaning idly over the rail, and replied to Wesley’s questions about the fish:

“If madame, your wife, will go into the sheds—” he began.

But what would happen in that case, Wesley never knew; for he was stirred by the rush of color to the girl’s face. She drew her hand from his arm, trembled, looked down.

Did she— Was there a chance?

Almost as agitated as she, he walked beside her up the rocky path.

Ovide was standing with Lucy and Pierre in front of the old church, built by the Récollet Fathers[8] when Canada was an unbroken wilderness; but Wesley was too excited to hear the legends he told. He went forward with Eloise into the dilapidated grave-yard, stopping before a black cross lettered in white, and, scarcely knowing what he did, read aloud: “Ci-git Marie, épouse de Pascal.”[9]

“Everything dies out but love,” he said. “Nothing has come down to us of these people who lived here centuries ago, but the story that Pascal loved Marie, and lost her. Love is all.”

He fancied, during this very irrelevant speech, which he uttered in a very tender tone, that Eloise’s face grew pale. It was certainly a very intelligent face: very probably she was as prudent a housewife as Lucy. And five thousand pounds waiting for somebody to pick up!

They remained an hour or two in Tadousac, wandering up and down the roads that wound through gray rocks—roads dignified by the names of streets. Wesley stopped in front of the picturesque villa built by the Governor General. His companion looked at it with awe, being a loyal Canadian. But he sniffed contemptuously:

“Any American, with a little capital, can make a fortané[10] in the States, in a year or two, which would enable him to live in a much more stylish house than that. It’s rather plain, to my tastes.”

“Yes. With a little capital,” he repeated.

The steamer-bell rang, and they hurried on board. Ovide and Pierre had found a seat for Lucy on the bow of the boat. Wesley took Mlle. Martel to the stern, and they remained there in spite of the old farmer’s appeals to “join forces and be jolly.”

When the boat stopped at Ha-ha Bay, for wood, Wesley hurried on shore, and engaged one of the high wooden boxes, which, turned on end, and set on wheels, the habitants called calèches. He helped Eloise to climb into this rude vehicle, gathered up the reins, and drove away up the mountain-road.

Lucy stood on the deck, looking after the calèche, smiling faintly. What did it matter, she said to herself, that Wesley was so suddenly enchanted with Louie’s black eyes and saucy wit? She was not neglected. She had her friend. Her reason told her that Pierre was more manly, and generous, and finer in grain, than Wesley. And yet—

She watched the mountain-road with a heavy weight on her heart awhile, but turned at last to take the bunches of feathery grass and packages of maple-sugar with which Pierre had come back laden from the shore.

He was so gay, so []icy, and so tender with it all, that she actually forgot the mountain-road; and did not know when Wesley and his companion came on board again.

They were befogged, that night, at Chicoutimi; the boat lay at the little pier until morning. Wesley remained, all the evening, close beside Eloise. He was determined to discover how heavy was the incumbrance attached to the fortune laying at the wayside.

They next day, they sailed down the narrow black soundless river, rushing silently between gigantic gray walls of rock, bare but for black cedars atop, that waved their gnarled arms in the wind. Lucy was little affected by scenery. She was a gay home-loving little body, and thought her uncle’s kitchen-garden a finer sight than these terrible and gloomy solitudes, where Nature hides herself in her cruel moods.

But they had their effect upon her. In after-life she remembered that dark-walled passage, as a strait that lay between her old life, in which Wesley bore a part, and a new one, full of love, of certain comfort, of joy, in which he was left out.

As they approached Quebec, on the second day, Wesley grew more nervous and uneasy. If to look at Lucy’s bright face upturned to Pierre gave him a pang, it was forgotten in the consciousness that his chance was fast escaping him. There was not an hour to lose. M. Vidoux might meet them on the pier, and tell Eloise of her good-fortune. The heiress of five thousand pounds would not betroth herself to a beggarly stationer. But if she were already betrothed?

M. Vidoux did not meet them on the pier, where they landed in the red sunset. Ovide hurried to the inn-stables for the wagon and horse, but, when he returned, Wesley and Eloise were gone. Again Wesley had hired a calèche, reflecting that a few pence judiciously spent now would bring in an ample harvest hereafter.

It was late that evening before he came up on the porch of the farm-house, where Ovide sat smoking his last pipe.

“Oh, certainly! Of course, I made sure of that before I risked anything.”

Ovide’s eyes twinkled. “It is plain you are not a Laficher. But God bless you, my boy. It will be a long betrothal, of necessity?”

“Probably not,” said Wesley, pompously. “Eloise will have a dower—something to start with in the States.”

“Heh? How’s that? I thought old Martel as poor a man as any in Charlesborough.”

Ovide waited for an answer, but Nelson made none. He was not bound to take anybody into his confidence.

“I have my little story, too, to tell,” said the old man, putting his hand on his arm. “I waited to see you. This voyage was a dangerous one for foolish children. Lucy—”

“Ah!” Nelson drew back suddenly. “She will marry that Drouin?”

“Yes. I have looked forward to it for a long time, mon fils.”

“And wished it?”

“Yes, and wished it,” said Ovide, gravely. “He is a good man, honest and kind.”

Early the next morning, Wesley opened his shop, and waited impatiently until noon for Vidoux. As the angelus rang out from the great cathedral-tower, through the still sunlit air, the avocet came bustling into the shop.

“Ah, Nelson!” he cried, “you expected me, eh? I would have been earlier, but I did not need your information. I have discovered the heir. She is a young girl in Charlesborough.”

“Yes,” said Wesley, taking up a package of papers to arrange, with affected indifference, and smiling complacently.

“And a pretty girl, too,” pursued M. Vidoux.

“So she is. Name of Martel.”

“Nothing of the kind. How could her name be Martel, when her mother was Martel’s sister? Her name is Laficher, and she is old Ovide’s niece—your adopted cousin.”

Wesley, with the package in his hand, stood staring at him.

“No wonder you are surprised. Yes, old Ovide’s niece, Lucy Laficher. By the way, Nelson, it’s a pity you and the little girl hadn’t made a match of it. Five thousand pounds would have started you in life very handsomely.”

“Yes, it would,” said Nelson, in a low voice, and he turned and put the package on the shelf.

Notes

1. French: beef stew.

2. French: good-for-nothing fellow.

3. French: gift.

4. French: lawyer.

5. In Catholic traditions, saint’s day, which is the day of the saint after which a baby is named and is celebrated much like a birthday.

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"The Alsatian Hound"October 1864Peterson's Magazine

Description

“The Alsatian Hound” By the Author of “The Second Life”

CHAPTER I.

It was near the close of a bright, quiet evening in the fall of the year 1791. The day had been dry and breathless, the sky filled with those sudden glints of hot color in the blue which hint at latent thunder. The storm would break during the night, people thought, glancing up into the sultry brown drift about the horizon and the vivid heat above, opening their doors and low windows, and coming out to sit on the balconies or porticos that faced the street. It has been the custom always in Baltimore, and gives that city its peculiar cheerful, heartsome welcome to a stranger’s eye. At the time of which we write, the old Catholic town wore an even more picturesque face than now. The setting sun threw long shadows down the crooked streets leading to the bay, edged with quaint houses, each apparently shaped out of some whim of the owner, but all draped with vines and divided from the sidewalk by beds of bright-colored flowers. Groups of children in their light summer dresses, matrons, gray-haired old men, leaning on their cane, dotted the broad pavements, laughing, jesting, sauntering carelessly along, while from the lighted windows came breaths music, and the fragrance of the great nosegays that filled every corner in-doors. The whole city seemed to have washed its hands of all traces of the day’s work, and come out for an hour’s healthy pleasure before sleep; and, with the old French blood running in its veins, it could have no idea of such pleasure without air, light, and music. Down on the wharf, also, crowds were gathered, watching the unloading of a lumber schooner and a brig, but with curious interest, a stranger would have thought. Something, too, in the aspect of these people would have attracted his inquiry: a repressed excitement, a sullen, angry watchfulness, reminding him of the smothered storm in the orange-tinted heat overhead. The men who watched the unloading of the ship, with pale and anxious faces, were not the shipping clerks or idlers who usually composed the groups upon the wharves: something in their quiet air of reticence and command, and the carelessness of fashion in their dress, marked them as principal men in the ruling caste of the city and planters from the nearer neighborhoods. There were a few women among them, also, their wives and daughters, closely veiled, and shrinking back from the jostling trucks and porters in this unusual plan, but watching eagerly the few passengers who left the ship, and slowly ascended the levee, as though they came from some land of the dead, and might bring tidings back of the loved one which each had lost. It was no idle fancy; they did come fresh from a suburb of hell; the fatal days of August were just passed, and these were refugees from the massacre of St. Domingo. [1] There were at that time many and close bonds of family union between the West Indian planters and a few old families in Maryland; we may guess, therefore, with what fever of anxiety each returning ship was watched for which might, perchance, contain any of the flying victims. Other fears, founded on more personal motives, caused the planters to gather around the refugees, drawing the apart from the slave laborers on the wharf, and questioning them in eager, hurried whispers, exclamations of horror and smothered curses breaking through the low undertone.

Piled up on the narrow street that faced the landing were trunks and hastily tied bundles, in some instances containing large treasures of specie[2] and jewelry, the remnants of fortune which the Creoles had brought with them in their flight. Much of this treasure was without an owner, forwarded by friends to planters, who, it was supposed, had escaped to the states, but whose bones were now lying charred beneath their own hearth-stones. The foundation of many a large fortune was laid by ship owners during those three weeks of terror and confusion.

As the evening sun sunk lower, and heavier yellow shadows struck across the bay, the crowds slowly disappeared from the wharves, and the few groups who remained were more silent, and moody, and stood apart, thoughtfully, until the night came on, and then went gravely to their homes. The gloom of that murderous day in the world’s history seemed to have struck across the ocean from the fatal island, and thrown its dread into even this sunny, cheerful city. So deep and vivid was the terror produced by the tidings on the inhabitants, that even the storm, coming up the bay, seemed to darken with some mysterious portent; and the very ship, drifting at anchor to and fro, slow and pendulous, on the moaning water, was like some messenger already poisoned with the pestilence it presaged.

While the city sank into uneasy slumber beneath the fitful and greenish light of the approaching tempest, Capt. Bureau, the master of the brig, stood in the window of his own house, his eyes fixed on the changing clouds, but his thoughts evidently far adrift. It was a low, palisaded dwelling, in the outskirts of the city; a quiet, solidly built home, marked by an air of thorough order and comfort within and without, but with few traces of grace or useless beauty. The master’s income had been slowly gained, and had measured his wants and tastes into a hard and narrow bound. The man himself, as he stood in the full light of a lamp upon the table, bore marks of the discipline of his niggardly fate in his toughened skin, sharpened nose, obstinately set mouth. The very tight-fitting clothes, unlike those of men of his craft, the implacable bend of his head, that sure index to character, betrayed a man who would give the last drop of his blood in the cause of justice and exact the pound of flesh, as if it were his by right. By the low table sat his wife. Madame Bureau had shared the fate of French women, whose early bloom of beauty has been rare—it perished soon, but an indescribable grace lingered in her manner, a fine tact in her habit of thought, as the aroma of a flower remains long after the color and freshness are dead. She sat motionless, watching her husband’s face anxiously, glancing, now and then, at a figure propped up in an easy-chair near the open window. It was that of a boy of about fifteen years of age, his clothes torn and stained with mud, and his face haggard with illness or pain. Nothing of the cavalier in the face, Madame Bureau thought, after her earnest scrutiny. The pure blood, filtered through generations of refinement into his veins, betrayed itself but illy; the features were rough, carelessly moulded, mouth wide, nose retrousse[2], eyes brown and earnest. Just an honest, mischievous, jolly English boy’s face, out of whom a useful citizen and kind husband might be made, but a man of note—never! Much as this decision imparted to her, Madame Bureau’s face did not alter when she made it, but retained its quiet naive smile.

Crouching beside the boy, and resting its head upon his knee, was a large Alsatian hound, coal-black, keeping guard, one could see at once; his eyes full of repressed fierceness, turned suspiciously from one to the other of the strange faces before him, his tail stirring angrily on the floor. There was but one other inmate of the room, a sickly-looking little girl, some years younger than the boy, who had fallen asleep on the ottoman opposite him; not a pretty child; but with one of those rare faces and forms which even in sleep express an intense womanliness, tenderness, weakness in every curve. The boy’s face, turned toward her, gathered a certain protecting, fond look, which did not escape the lady’s keen eye.

“How heavily she sleeps, Addy!” he said. “Quiet, Trull!”

“Quiet, Bernard!” said the lady, with a motion of her white hand. “My boy forgets his wound—that he needs rest. To-morrow I have a long story to hear. The whole story, mon cher[4], from the hour you were first wakened by the crackling flames, until you found yourself in the brig.”

A spasm of pain passed over the boy’s face. “I—Monsieur Bureau will tell you, madame. He saved me—”

“And that,” she said, hastily rising and caressing him with one hand, “is all you need ever remember of the days gone. That—and that he brought you to a home only less tender than the one you have lost.”

Bernard held the delicate fingers against his cheek tightly, but without speaking.

Captain Bureau watched them with a smile on his grim mouth. There were reasons why, in bringing this boy home, he should feel the peculiar angry discomfort attendant on a just action performed for the sake of duty alone, and he seized on any motive eagerly which would make duty more palatable to his whims as well as his conscience. He had performed his duty to the uttermost limit. When his ship lay at anchor off The Roads, ready to receive the refugees who had escaped the wholesale murder inland, he had penetrated far into the interior for the sole purpose of saving the family, of which this boy was the only one left to tell the tale of death. He had saved him, and, facing him now on his own hearth-stone, he did not forget that this boy, Bernard Menager, homeless and a beggar, was as much the affianced husband of his child, and future partner in his business, as he had been three years ago, when the contract had been made with his father, and the boy represented the largest estate on the islands. “Times are changed, Bernard,” he said, seconding his wife’s kindly effort in the best way he knew. “But promises remain the same. The Bureaus never go back of their word. You shall be with us a son from this day forth, and—what was to be, shall be.”

Bernard fixed his eyes on him. There was a steady probing look in them that made the master wince, but he met it quietly. “It was rough, perhaps, to make the lad conscious of the change so soon,” he thought. “But he has sense disproportioned to his years, he would know what a sacrifice it is for me to fulfill my bond with regard to Addy. He might have doubted me. Even by a boy I will not be mistaken or doubted,” his sallow face growing hot beneath the yellow whiskers.

“And the dog, Bernard?” said the lady, her eyes growing moist as she looked into the boy’s worn, grieved face. So little time it seemed since that happy summer when she and Addy grew strong and fresh in the rose-gardens about the great villa of Menagers! How Bernard and the little girl passed the days like silly children, hunting for gold beetles in the melon fields, or orange plantations, or fishing in the hot blue creek below the orchards. How stately was the courtesy of that gray-haired old sage, Monsieur Menager! Truly a sage, whether he read books or no—a philosopher—a— For his English wife—ah—pfui! shrugging her drooping shoulders. Now English wife and gray-haired old cavalier lay, burned and mangled corpses, on their own threshold. The very orange grove was burned—the captain said—ah! such delicious oranges, the real Antonelli graft. And this pauve enfant[5]— “Well, my child, the dog?”

“Poor Trull! I do not know, madame. It is confused. He wakened me, that I remember, pulling at the bed-clothes. There was a struggle outside, many of them, it may be, I do not know; his jaw is cut, and his fore-leg. When I found myself on the brig, the dog was with me.”

“The hound fought like a lion,” interrupted the captain; “I brought him with us. He has as much soul in his body as would suffice for a dozen carcasses of yonder fiends. We will keep him here,” to the boy.

“Yes,” quietly. “Trull never leaves me.”

There was a slight pause. “It grows late,” said Madame Bureau. “I will wish you happy dreams—morning dreams, remember, my son, for this is the dawn of a new, pleasant life, we will hope, for you,” kissing him lightly on each cheek. “I will send her bonne[6] for Adelaide,” passing her husband with a cheerful, gay reverence.

He smiled, following her with his eyes to the door. Just in proportion as his life had otherwise been coarse-grained and practical, he loved the grace and delicate air of sunshine and pleasure about his wife. Bernard watched her also, and, looking up, met with an answering smile of admiration the master’s glance. Perhaps that look of the boy’s did more to soften the captain’s heart to him than all his losses and pain.

“You are tired, lad,” he said, “I will bid you good-night. Antoine shall show you your chamber.”

“Not yet, captain, if you are willing. I have a word to say to you.”

There was an odd sort of self-reliance in the boy that pleased the old seaman. They waited silently until Addy, grumbling at being wakened, was swept off to bed by her nurse and the door closed behind them, then the boy turned and raised himself gravely. “Only a few words, Capt. Bureau, then I will not bring the subject before you again. I am young to speak of such matters—but with us hot-blooded islanders life grows real early.”

The captain was startled. There was more in the jesting, laughing boy than he had thought. He suffered him to go on in silence, however, although he hesitated for encouragement.

“I understood your words a few moments ago. It is noble as well as just to redeem a promise made under circumstances so different.”

“It is simply just, Bernard.”

“As you will. I am only a boy, but I love the woman who is to be my wife as a man loves. Addy shall be tenderly cared for always as she has been in her father’s house.”

“We need not speak of that, boy. There are many years to come before the contract can be fulfilled.”

“But five, sir, if I remember aright. It was not that I wished to say to you; but this, that, boy as I am, I know and comprehend how great is the sacrifice you have made in promising your child again—to me—a beggar, and,” rising suddenly to his feet, and lowering his voice, “that as He hears me who will help me, you shall never repent it. I saw, to-night, all you gave up for your plighted word. I will not be unworthy of the sacrifice. It shall be my life’s work to made you as proud to receive the penniless Bernard Menager as though he yet owned his inheritance.”

“If I had not known and respected your individual character, lad,” said the captain, gruffly, “I would not have promised to wed my child to blood and position. Young as you were, I saw you were the counterpart of your father. That is enough. We will say no more about it. Your being penniless does not injure the contract.”

“It does to me,” said Bernard, hotly. “You do not understand me. I will not marry your daughter penniless. The home I give her must be as warm a nest as the one she leaves.”

“Well, well, boy, so be it,” repressing a half-contemptuous smile. “We’ll go to bed now. I made it a rule in these first weeks of home-coming, to make up for all the sleep lost in the voyage. I advise you to put Addy out of your head and follow my example. If you persist in your desire to be a sailor, I will see to-morrow what can be done toward finding you a berth on a man of war; but I have but little influence, Bernard. It is most probable you will have to content yourself with the place on the brig which I can give you.”

“It may answer for the present,” he replied, quietly. “Good-night, Capt. Bureau.” There were thoughts and ambitions in the boy’s head of which he knew nothing, the captain thought, as he made his way over the flagged hall and up the stair-case. There was a resistance, an under-texture of firmness, which the old sailor did not understand, in the careless, jolly boy. It was like putting your finger on limpid water and finding a sheet of elastic iron beneath. He liked it—liked the boy. He was glad he had kept his word about Addy.

CHAPTER II.

It was about six years from this time that the English family evacuated the island of Hespaniola,[7] leaving it in possession of the blacks and a few French planters, who struggled and intrigued vainly for the possession of their lands. Tidings from the islands came but seldom to the American shores, and then were vague and uncertain, full of horrors of alternate slaughter by blacks and whites, of pestilence, and, in some instances, of famine—tales which grew stale, at last, and lost their warning import to the slaveholders of the main-land.

Great and immediate changes had passed over the house of the Bureaus, where our story began. The gruff old captain was dead, lost in a storm off shore, within sight almost of the smoke of his own dwelling. After that came other trials, less keen, but coarser, and irritating to health and temper: loss of fortune and position. The old sailor had been no financier—ill-luck had dogged his money, invest it where he would—and, in consequence, Madame Bureau found herself six months after her widowhood commenced, dependent on her daughter’s husband, Bernard Menager. For the course of love both true and arranged by contract had run smoothly in its grooves, and the boy and girl, now a grave, working man and woman, worked and enjoyed life together, coming closer to God, let us believe, in that they were happy and together.

It was a dull, rainy morning in September when our story recommences. A low fire was burning on the hearth of the room where, six years before, old Capt. Bureau had renewed his contract with the boy which he had made with the father. A low fire, though the day was chilly. The room was set apart for Madame Bureau’s use, and she professed to dislike a heated air. Now, however, when no one was by, she shivered, drawing her woolen shawl closer about her. Fuel was dear, even in that day of plenty, for people with the stinted means of the Menagers. The lady had grown thin and haggard; skillfully added folds in her dress, however, preserved the graceful contour of old; but nothing could conceal the anxious lines upon her face, or give to the unquiet blue eye its former tranquil brilliance. She moved now uneasily about the room, stooping over the charring logs, then hurrying to the window to gaze drearily out into the plashing rain, tracing the fallen drops upon the pane absently with her finger. Now and then she gave vent to a deep sigh, or clasped her hands together in her bizarre French fashion, taking out occasionally, also, a delicate handkerchief—part of the poor lady’s trousseau, by the way—to wipe away the tears that were creeping slowly down her withered cheek.

Sometimes a hurried, heavy step overhead would cause her to pause and listen intently, and then again would come the “Hélas!” and the tear, and a muttered “Pauvres enfants!”[8] It was the eve of one of Bernard Menager’s voyages, for he was yet a master’s mate on the brig Swanwick. Places and preferment were hard to obtain in those days, even in the merchant service, and Menager had no aid to success beyond his own industry and indomitable perseverance. The old lady had been alone about half an hour, and had seated herself finally close by the flickering fire, when the door noiselessly opened and her son-in-law entered. She looked up at him with a cheerful smile: there was something infectious in Bernard Menager’s earnest, hearty face and his bursts of jovial laughter.

“It is better for my chest that the fire be low,” she said, repressing a cough.

“Tut, tut! I understand. Has it come to that? Let Addy bring the boy here, and extinguish the fire in the nursery, if the child will not disturb you. It will only be for a few weeks,” he added, in a lower voice.

“Weeks?” She wrung her hands once more. “Dufond will close the mortgage then on the house?”

“Yes!” putting his hand soothingly on her shoulder.

“And we are homeless!” speaking in French, as she always did when agitated. “Houseless, my Addy and her child! And I have brought them to this! Yes, I; you need not look surprised, Bernard. I never have told you, but it was for bills for dress and bijouterie[10] that the mortgage was given by Capt. Bureau to Dufond. It is I that have laid the burdens on you, my son, which you have been struggling so long to bear.”

“Well, well, madame,” said the bluff sailor, putting his arm about her as tenderly as if she had been a child, and seating her, “we will not look back to that, but take courage to meet what comes. It is you who will suffer most, we never will forget that. We are young—Addy and I—and can fight poverty; but you—it is not easy to leave the home every stone of which has some tender memory of a long life.” The old lady choked back her tears, and tried to smile. “That’s right, ma mere,” cheerily. “I will have returned before the day for foreclosing the mortgage, and, by that time, will have devised some place of refuge for you and the children,” for by that name Addy and her baby were oftenest called.

“Yes, yes. Go now, my son. Do not waste more time with me—Addy waits to say farewell.” She embraced him and turned away.

Menager looked after her, a deeper pain in his face than she had seen there. He had hidden from her the worst of the fate coming upon them; he felt for her such a pitiful affection, knowing how faithful and weak was the woman’s heart under her wasted breast. He never had forgotten the kiss she gave to the motherless boy, long ago.

Leaving the room and crossing the damp, vacant hall, he pushed open a door opening at the top of a flight of stone steps set in the wall. The stone was moist, overgrown with moss and lichen, and the garden below was matted, beneath the beating rain, with the rank, lush growth and gaudy colors of late autumn. His wife waited for him on the steps, her slight figure and light hair covered with a flannel cloak and hood.

“I came here, Bernard, because I thought we would be unheard,” as he caught her hands, looking in her face.

“God bless you, Addy, for that look. My girl is brave—she is going to meet all that comes without quailing.”

“I must know the worst, Bernard.” If her face grew paler, her eyes did not falter.

He caught her passionately to his heart, and, after a moment, said,

“You shall know all, child. I tried to spare you, but it is too late now.”

“There is worse than the mortgage to dread? Other debts of my fathers’—”

“Yes. I assumed them all. The just man, I thought, should not have one stone of dishonor thrown on his grave. You know, Addy, I have done what I could,” wiping his forehead.

She clung closer to him. Only they know the years of hard, exhausting labor which those words meant.

“I know, Bernard, I know.”

“I have failed. If I had my hands free from debt, my wages would keep us in comfort; more would come hereafter. But the day after the one on which the mortgage will be foreclosed, another debt is due to Dufond. He is a hard creditor, and, failing to pay it—”

She looked up, her lips scarcely moving, “To prison? You, Bernard?”

He nodded. “Be calm, my little girl. I have faced this a long time. It’s a hard law, but—God is on our side,” his color changing.

She said nothing, her head sinking helplessly against his arm. There was a long pause. “Is there no hope?” she said, at last, in a hoarse voice.

“I know of none, unless it rests in this mysterious summons I have received to Hespaniola, or Hayti, as they call it now.”

“I had forgotten that,” raising her head, her face flushing. There may be a chance there. You never showed me the letter, Bernard. What is it?”

“I left it on the brig. The ship touched at Tiburon on the last voyage; the letter was brought to me there, dated from my father’s plantation”—he winced as he said this—“urging me to meet the writer on a certain day, three weeks from now, in the banana grove below the dwelling-house, near the sea. The letter was in pure enough French; its writer professed to be my father’s steward. His purpose in meeting me was to restore to me certain jewels and treasures, secreted by him at the time of the massacre, of sufficient value to induce me to brave the danger of seeking the interview. I knew there were such jewels,” he said, thoughtfully. “My father concealed them days before the insurrection; but they doubtless fell into the hands of the negroes, unless this man, Petrie—I remember him well, but I was not aware that any one accompanied my father when he hid the casket. I helped him collect them,” speaking disjointedly, as the old memories rose up before him. “There were diamonds of my mother’s, her own other personal jewels, besides these heir-looms of the Menagers. It was a fortune for a princess, it seems to me now,” with a faint smile. “I do not know what warning of evil tempted my father to secret them; but I helped him, as I said, collect these jewels, plate, and specie, in the house, and secure it in a small iron chest. I remember old Dr. Thoreau’s step was heard; so I remained in the library to receive him, while my father carried the chest away.”

“Alone?”

“Trull followed him, but Trull cannot speak,” patting the old hound, that, gaunt and gray with age, had crept close to the step on which they stood.

“Your father may have taken Petrie to assist him in concealing it,” said his wife, musingly.

“It is probable. At any rate, I will risk an interview. What motive could he have in drawing me to the plantation, other than the one he assigns? My father was not able, afterward, to speak to me alone. There were guests in the house until a late hour, that night, and by dawn—he was a corpse.”

Addy put her arm gently about him. “I know, Bernard—hush! We will not speak of that,” as a strong shudder passed over him. “Bernard—” She paused.

“What is it darling?”

“I have a strange fear of this attempt to revisit the plantation. It—”

“It is our only hope, Addy,” with a desperate sigh for breath. “You do not know how fatal the future is for us without some sudden and immediate help. I foresee nothing but a prison for me, beggary for you and your mother. I must meet this Petrie. The danger is less than we think, for the army of the blacks is concentrated about the capital. I shall easily escape their picquets[11] by coasting along shore in a bateau.[12] If I am discovered, it will be a fight for life—not the first, nor the hardest.”

The poor girl sobbed like a child. She was so young, poor Addy! and had had so few bright days in her life to strengthen her.

Menager carried her into the room. Half an hour after, he went through the rain down to the wharf, tightening his belt, and arranging his flask and knife, his swarthy face working convulsively, and old Trull hobbling after him. Bernard never went on a voyage without Trull.

CHAPTER III.

A sombre evening; dull, red clouds in clogged masses about the horizon; the air hot, immovable, unfit for breathing, as we find it in these islands, soaked, as it were, with sickly smells of over-ripe fruit.

Along the shore a heavy shadow, cast by the rising hills, and tangled trees and vines; poisonous creepers, trailing from every limb, in a rank vegetation, with the dingy, sultry-colored flowers that belong to all deadly plants; the saffron berries of the parasite ivy, and the purple bloom of the night-shade. If life is most sensual and lustful in tropical climes, death also lies nearest in wait, in a thousand forms, with hot breath touching our flesh. Along the scarcely rippling water, close to the dripping vines, a little canoe steered noiselessly toward an inlet, where a narrow creek emptied into the sea. A stoutly built man held the oars, watching keenly every motion of the leaves on the shore. Night was gathering so fast and heavily that he had need to watch keenly to detect a lurking foe, if any such there were. A shaggy dog lay at his feet, its red eye also peering suspiciously through the darkness. Turning up the creek, he bent to the oars, still with caution: the current of the black water was deep and strong, yet so narrow that the trees overlapped their branches overhead. Now and then a break in the hedge showed glimpses of fens, deep and foul, with nauseous smelling weeds, with asphodel, glittering serpents gliding into their holes as the low plash of the oars was heard. Familiar sights and sounds to Menager; yet years had passed since he had known them, and now the savage, revengeful memories they wakened made his blood grow cold, and his teeth clench together. For an hour he rowed up the stream, then more slowly, as he came in sight of old land-marks near his plantation. The banana grove was in sight at last—the yellow fruit showing white in the sickly moonlight that began to creep over the landscape, throwing ghostly and uncertain shadows. Bernard rested on his oars for a moment, then drawing the bateau close to the shore, secured it under the shade of a heavy tree. The dog raised his head, look cautiously around, and then slowly rose to his feet and sprang on the bank beside his master. It was curious to mark the quick, keen look of intelligence between the hound and the man before they ventured to penetrate the thicket with noiseless steps. Menager noted the strange glance of recognition which the dog had given when they touched their old play-grounds—the shiver of terror that passed over him—the new alertness, defiant and watchful, that seemed to have kindled in his veins their long dead life, as he proudly trode beside him.

“Not to the house, old friend,” he muttered; “you and I will never cross that threshold again,” as, with bated breath and bent body, he thrust his way through the thicket. The hound glanced up into his face. “Here is the pool where I caught the great turtle, and Trull dragged it out for me. I wonder if he remembers?” Far up the hill in the moonlight he could see a part of the house, a mass of burned rafters and bricks, over which the ivy had begun to creep. Menager turned his eyes away, and thought of Addy. There were fiends at work at his honest heart, and he went back to the thought of the little wife for safety.

On, slower and slower, until the banana wood was reach. The dog stopped, snuffed the air, whined, and caught at his master’s trousers, pulling him toward the boat impatiently. “You snuff danger, old boy? Let it be so. It’s for life and freedom,” with the thought of the prison waiting for him.

There was a low stone-house in the center of the wood, used, in old times, as a tool-house; there Petrie had promised to wait for him. Menager saw a light gleaming from under the closed oak door. He examined the priming of the pistols in his belt, and loosened the sharp knife in its case. “Lie down, Trull; keep watch for me here by this tree; come when I whistle.” The dog hesitated—then, accustomed to obedience, laid down with a low howl. Menager walked on a few steps, then he turned. “Good-by, old fellow,” he said.

There was an unnatural silence about him, as he neared the house, that stillness, that grave warning of sudden and lurking danger. He paused a moment by the door. The moon from behind a cloud threw a sharp beam of light over fen and poisonous thickets, the sultry, livid sky, the path and the hound laying there, the green, heaving sea, the ship far off at anchor—the sea, beyond which was Addy!

He pushed open the door and entered. A low room, with stone floor and walls, deadening all sound; heavy rafters above; one square window high out at arm’s reach; a pine table with a dull oil-lamp burning on it. The door swung behind him with a clang. He stood silent a moment, then approached the table. Petrie was not here: had difficulty, probably, in eluding the blacks. He rested his arm on the table, glancing about him indifferently. “It is a strangely bare room,” he thought, “but—”

With a sharp cry he fell to the ground, rose with a desperate struggle, fell again, his arms pinioned to his side, his legs bound together, tightening cords about his chest, his head and neck. The fall stunned him, but Menager had a cool head. Before he was able to open his eyes, he was aware of all that had happened; he was bound by a lasso, thrown by no unskillful hand: let him but get his hand on his knife, and he was free. Another struggle, in which every muscle was strained, when a bony hand, with a grip like steel, held his wrist, and, looking up, his vision still bleared from the concussion of the fall, he saw a gaunt, muscular figure leaning over him, and in a moment busy hands were knotting the cords about his arms.

“You need not struggle, you but give me additional trouble, uselessly for yourself,” with a laugh.

“Winifred?”

“Yes. It is I,” said the woman, for it was a woman, seating herself beside him. “You were helpless in my arms when a baby, but not so helpless as now.” She laughed again, slowly chafing her hands together. The woman was almost gigantic in size, with the strength of two such men as Menager, burly though he was, in her body. He looked into her face. Some old memory came over him that made him know that then he faced death. Cold drops covered his face, for he thought of Addy and of his child.

“You know why I have brought you here, Bernard Menager?”

“I know.”

“I wrote the note. Petrie is gone years ago. I have lived here alone since the night—” She stopped, her great rude features growing suddenly still.

“Since that night my father was murdered! You did it? It was your hand struck the blow?” the white foam coming to his lips. “It was but that of which I had often warned him from you.”

She shook her head, a strange dreamy look in her eyes. “No, I could not do that. When the time came, though I had chosen it for my work, I hid, Bernard. Afterward I went into the burning houses and pulled out his body—I washed and dressed it. How bonnily his hair had curled! Yours is coarse and straight, Bernard. But the blacks took him from me to do what they would with. I loved him so, boy.” She started to her feet. “I hated him! There’s a lie on my lips even now.” She leaned her gray head against the wall, standing motionless.

The old memory, with its awful shame and anguish, came to Bernard’s mind. If the woman had been his father’s murderer, he must yet have pitied her! have looked on her as an avenger, have shrunk guiltily from her with the weight of crimes not his.

“Unloose me. I, at least, am innocent of harm toward you, woman.”

She came back, cool and grave, looking steadily at him. It was the most dangerous form her insanity assumed, as Bernard knew of old. “I have schemed to bring you here for years. I do not give up my purposes when they are fulfilled. Caught by a woman! The strong-limbed Bernard, whose muscles his father used to show me with pride. While my boy—Oh! my boy! my baby!” She checked the wild cry suddenly and peered down into his face. “I held my baby in my arms—dead, you know—and swore that no child of its murderer should live. I think I have not been myself since that night. But I keep my oath. Why, Bernard,” laying her hand on his arm, “was ever heard such a pitiful thing that a father should murder his own child! I must keep my vow, Bernard,” her head dropping on her breast. She would keep it, he knew that. The woman was persistent as a bull-dog when she had taken her grip of an enemy. But was he to lie her chained like some beast to be done to death? She drew the pistols from his belt and threw them aside, the knife. Turning on his side with one mighty effort, he essayed to grapple with her, his arms still pinioned. It was for life or death. Her clutch was like iron. “It is useless,” putting her heavy arm on his throat. She drew out a sharp lancet and plunged it into his arm. “You are very like him,” in the same dreamy, quiet voice, “I will not be cruel. One falls asleep—dying so.”

“Bah!” said Menager. “Dying!”

He called aloud once, twice.

“There is no one within a mile’s call. The black picquets are at the Ford.”

“So it will be easier for me to return to the ship,” he said, taunting her.

But he called again, fiercely, for the blood was flowing faster and his strength was failing. There was a noise outside, a mad growl, a leap, a shaggy mass bounding in the window, and the hound had seized the woman by the throat. What followed was a confusion of terror afterward to Menager. He never lingered on its recital. While the desperate struggle went on beside him, he rolled himself over within reach of the knife, and at last cut the cords. He was free. A half-hour afterward, the woman was bound with the cords she had furnished. Menager tied up a great wound in the dog’s breast which she had given him, and then turned to bind her wounded throat.

“I will secure you for the sake of my own safety,” he said. “You can gnaw the cords, but it will be a day’s work, Winifred,” with a smile.

“So many years I have schemed for this,” she muttered, closing her eyes. He doubted if she would ever gnaw the cords. It would be more like her to starve to death—that would give action for her diseased power of endurance. But what could he do? He took up the still loaded pistols. “Come, Trull, I’m strong enough to carry you, old boy. You are my patient now.

In his long voyages, Menager had accustomed himself to talk to the hound as if he were a human being. But the dog drew himself over the floor, pawing at one stone in the wall a trifle more discolored from mould than the others. The woman gave a sudden cry of anger.

“Come, Trull. What ails the beast? Heh?” He came closer. The dog scratched more vehemently at the same spot, and Menager kicked it with his foot. It shook, he stooped down, some sudden recollection making his face grave, silencing him. There was a secret entrance to the family vault from this house, he remembered. Pressing his foot firmly on the stone, it moved slowly back, disclosing a narrow staircase. Menager glanced suspiciously at the woman, then went down. The stair-case ended abruptly in a solid wall; the entrance to the vault was walled up, but he stumbled over some obstacle. There was a moment’s pause, then he remembered bearing an iron chest. He carried it outside the building, whither the dog dragged himself painfully.

For the first time the man grew weak, recognizing the danger passed, the new life that lay before him—of which the treasure that chest contained was the key. He carried the dog first to the boat, then the box. Before he untied the bateau, he wrenched the lid off the chest. The moonlight fell on it, and awakened him to a sudden glory of glowing color, ruby, emerald, diamond, flashing a welcome, as it were, to hope and happiness. Bernard Menager thrust his arm deep among them, and laughed aloud like a child. “Oh, Addy! Addy!” he cried. Old Trull tried to bark and licked his hand. “Why, old dog, I had forgotten you.” When he loosened the boat, he did not take the oars, but held the hound’s head on his knee.

“The leap and struggle have been more than your age could bear, old Bruin,”[13] he said. “You and I are not as young as we were when we hunted together.” There was a laugh on the dog’s face, but his big eyes were fixed with a strange, solemn earnestness on his master’s. Menager put his hand on the wound. “How hotly it throbs. Oh, Trull! why cannot you tell me where the pain is!” There was unutterable hunger in the dog’s look, which belongs to things whose lives have been thwarted. Surely he knew that he was dumb.

They floated down the creek out into the sea. It was time now for Menager to take the oars, but he had forgotten them; he was stooping, chafing the dog’s breast, looking in his face, but saying nothing. The boat drifted out to sea; the dog, now and then, feebly wagged his tail and licked Bernard’s face or hand. Not when he stood near to death himself was Menager so colorless as now. He stooped closer. “It’s been a hard life we’ve lived together, Trull. Now it will be happy and gay. Do you—do you hear me?”

Happy and gay! Surely he heard. He shook himself, stood up proudly, drawn to his immense height. A deep bay of triumph broke the silent echoes; then he laid down at his master’s feet, looking up into his face long and sadly. What the spirits of the old friends said to each other, in that last hour, only they know; presently the dog’s eyes slowly closed, and Menager let his head sink between his hands and sat motionless. He roused himself at last and rowed to the ship, trying to think of the happy life coming, and of home; but home, and Addy and her child seemed very far off, for his heart was heavy, and his hand was on the dead head of his oldest friend.

Notes

1. The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 with a rebellion by escaped slaves in opposition to slavery and French and American colonialism. It lasted until 1804, when Haiti gained independence under indigenous rule. The impact on the American and entire Atlantic slave systems was immense. RHD’s reference to “planters” were, in fact, colonialist slaveowners.↩

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"The Man in the Cage" December 1877Harper's New Monthly Magazine

Description

“The Man in the Cage”

“What is that you say, Glosher? In a cage? A human being in an iron cage?”

“Just so. That’s the house, and that’s the window of the room he’s in. I saw him led in, chained like a mad steer, three men with their guns pointed behind. That’s a year ago this September. It’s a low cage, with bars as thick as my wrist. He’s chained to the floor inside it.”

The house was a small brick building, the shingled roof curled and black with age; it stood in a field overgrown with thistles and Jamestown weed. A rotting paling fence separated it from the crooked grassy highway which served as a street for the village—a drowsy hamlet in North Carolina, lying literally above the clouds, on one of the mountains of the great Balsam range.

Glosher lounged on, whistling, to the inn, with the string of trout which they had caught, and Mr. Britton, his rod in hand, leaned over the fence looking at the window inside of which was the cage.

He was a sensitive little man, and this thing had startled and moved him greatly. He had been sauntering along just now, a noon sunshine was warm and brilliant: every color kindled in it and the thin air to new vigor. These weeds alone shone like bits of pure lavender; and the blackberries glowed upon the tumble-down fences in knobs of rubies and garnet. Every body in the little hamlet had a friendly greeting for him. At the door of one unpainted house an old woman sat carding wool, her yellow-haired grandchild asleep at her feet; on the porch of another pretty girl was spinning. Glosher, who was a manly young fellow, had looked sheepish as they passed, and the girl blushed and broke her thread. Mr. Britton smiled to himself. He was but three months married, and every lover was his brother. The village hung on the edge of the height; below it the sea of cirrus clouds was full of light and motion, while a range of mighty peaks beyond shut the hamlet, so it seemed to his fancy, into a strange and sunny calm. A moment before he had thus been filled with a soft feminine content in himself and his world and his God, thankful for the happy chance which had led him to this peaceful eyrie to spend his hardly earned holiday. Now he could think only of this window. It was a gaping cave of darkness in the sunshine, and the man within for a year had seen nothing of grassy street, or of young girls, or little children, or driving clouds. He was a beast, chained like a beast in a cage.

As Mr. Britton waited uncertain, he heard coming out of the darkness a sigh and the clank of a chain.

“Good God! That these things should be in such a world! –In such a world!”

He hurried on, very sorry for this human beast, but more stung and aggrieved that the ennobling emotions and harmony of his holiday had been impaired. His coat sleeve, too, was stained with some of the dank lichen on the fence about this accursed place. He wiped it off with a quick sense of loathing and taint. The Rev. Edward Britton was noted for the dainty fastidiousness of his dress and of his morals.

When he reached the little inn he found the landlord waiting at the gate under the walnut-trees. Guests were a novelty, and were made much of by these mountaineers.
“We are a-waiting supper for you, Sir. Oh, no difference; it’s you that’s to be consulted”--walking beside him down through the old-fashioned garden, with its border of hollyhocks and blue succory.

“You had good luck, Glosher says, Sir.”

“What has that man done, that you cage him like a brute?“ interrupted the young clergyman, in a harsh, excited tone.

“Done? Ef you’ll come into this room, I’ll tell you the story,” dropping his voice. It’s a strange one enough.”

“No,” pushing past him. “Why should I hear it?”

Mr. Britton changed his coat before going into his wife’s room. It was a cozy apartment, with windows looking out over the stretch of solitudes and heights of the Nantahala range. A wood fire burned on the hearth. Mrs. Britton, who had been a shy girl but two or three months ago, sat before it trimming a hat. She was a plump, pink-cheeked dot of a woman, with quick-glancing dark eyes, and a habit of frequent decisive little nods and gestures. Her lap was full of brightly colored ribbons; her hand, with its tiny gold thimble, fluttered about her work like a white glancing bird.

“And what have you discovered in this queer corner of the world today, Phoebe?” he asked, with a qualm of apprehension.

“An old slave in a hut out of town, who told me she refugeed from Virginia during the war, leaving two sons behind her in Albemarle. I wrote an advertisement and some letters about them. I think they will bring the boys to light.”

“What more did you do my dear?”

“I made a sketch of an Indian who came in with his blow-gun and some skins, and of a mountaineer who was going up to the high range to salt the wild cattle. See, here he is: blue homespun, high boots, bags of salt on his hips, gun for wolves, and whiskey for rattle snakes.”

“It is very spirited, Phoebe. A little faulty as to the knees, eh?” with kindling interest in his face. There were one or two good prints on the wall, which they had brought in their trunks. Phoebe and he were amateurs in art, and had found a good deal of keen enjoyment already in their work and disputes. Phoebe took out her pencils and retouched the sketch. Then she went back to her sewing and her husband stirred the fire, and began to talk of home and parish work. Outside, the cloud of fog had risen, and began to shut them in. The logs crackled and sparkled, turning Phoebe’s blue ribbon into green. Presently Joe, the lame waiter, came up carrying a tray with their supper. As he spread it on a round table at the side of the fire, Mr. Britton scanned eagerly the smoking coffee, the brown biscuits, the delicate salmon-colored trout. He always did relish a good meal, and the days fishing had made him hungry. Joe was dismissed, and Phoebe drew closer to the table. How rosy and fair she was! How warm was the fire! When he proceeded to dress a trout for her he had quite forgotten the man in the cage, and all the rest of the world outside of that wall of screening mist. It seemed to him as if his life was rounded and perfect just then. He and his wife ate their trout, and talked pleasant parish gossip. He was twenty-three. He had graduated the year before, with the reputation of possessing a nice talent for English verse and a vein of tender sentimentalism, which would not impair his usefulness as a popular preacher. His only doubt as to his own qualifications for the heavenly calling was as to his lack of stature in the pulpit. But when he really went into the pulpit, a stool on which he could stand remedied that difficulty. When he was mounted on the stool his face appeared above the snowy surplice blue-eyed, calm, and fastidious, framed in fair hair and wide whiskers, and as innocent of all knowledge of human nature as the insipid Madonna in the window overhead. As soon as he was called to the parish of All-Saints he married. All-Saints was a snug nest for these two tame birds. It was made up of half a dozen families in a town which had sprung up about a railway station in Ohio. The church was new, from the red cushions to the tiny organ and painted window. Choir, vestry-men, congregation, all were new and full of zeal. There was the gray old senior warden, who kept an exceedingly sharp eye on the Reverend Edward; there were the bustling matrons in black silk, with their sewing circle; there was the inevitable cordon of adoring young girls. Mr. Britton was wont to declare that his flock were one with him in spirit, that they held up his hands in his battle with error. He had, in fact, carried his own belief into practice with regard to changes in albs, chasubles, and altar cloth, and the whole congregation supported him heartily, as they did in his dispute with the Low-Church pastor of St. Thomas concerning the number of genuflections requisite in the creed.

It will thus be seen that the Rev. Mr. Britton had reason when he felt his life to be rounded and complete. He could have wished, perhaps, that Phoebe had not been too much occupied with housekeeping duties to take much interest in the alb or chasuble troubles. She was always ready, however, to stand sponsor for the children of the congregation, or to nurse them when they were sick, and was as anxious about the brides, and cried over the dead, as if the people were her own kinfolk.

He was talking of some of these babies whom he had baptized and young girls whom he had married.

“I thank God often for the happy lot that has fallen to me, my dear,” he said, his voice unsteady. “To be the shepherd of this little flock from the cradle to the grave! I little thought when I was a boy such good fortune would be mine.”

“When you were a boy, and your stepfather used to thrash you so horribly!” said Phoebe in her brusque way. “Matthew Pansent? Pansent? It seems as if I had heard that name within a day or two. Didn’t you tell me he went to South Carolina after your mother’s death?”

“Yes. It is not necessary to speak farther of him.” Mr. Britton’s voice was singularly altered. He rose hastily, and began to pace up and down the room. When she looked up she saw that his mild face has undergone a ghastly change. He stopped in front of her. “Phoebe, I desire that you will never mention that man’s name to me again”—in a harsh, strident tone.

“No, Edward.”

Mr. Britton walked up and down the dim fire-lighted room. He did not speak again. He was a gentle, submissive Christian. Every body knew that. He knew it of himself. But at the bare mention of Pansent’s name his head began to throb, and the blood burned in his veins with the fire of hell. His sole thought was of what punishment he would mete out to the wretch if he had the power. None seemed to him sufficient. Hate him? Why should he not hate him? Had he not tortured his youth, made his mother’s old age one long breath of misery? To hate him was to hate sin—fraud-- He caught one of Phoebe’s keen glances and tried to smile back at her.

“I will go out in the fresh air a while, my dear. Am not well.” His countenance was pinched and colorless; there was a different man looking out from it than the sentimental little clergy man whom she had married.
As he went down the stairs into the impenetrable fog he staggered. It was hard that he, a clergyman, a godly man, should be thus torn with wrath, however righteous. How could he follow out the holy, calm life he purposed, while this man lived? If he were dead, if he could see him lying on the ground here—

He stopped, staring before him with a long breath of relief. It seemed for a moment as if the world was actually rid of this incubus; then, recollecting himself with a shudder, he went on.

When Mr. Britton returned, an hour later, the only trace of the moral convulsion through which he had passed was that he was cross and peevish. These weak, sweetly toned natures are not frequently found with an obstinate, inhuman chord running through them, and when it is struck, all their all their ordinary harmonies are jarred out of tune. This may account for the fact that Mr. Britton presently told his wife of the man in the cage, although, an hour or two before he had been anxious to keep her in ignorance of this terrible thing.

“It is the barbarous custom of this State,” he continued, irritably. “They treat a criminal as a brute—chain him by leg and arm to the floor, inside of just such a cage as is used for wild beasts.”

Phoebe turned very pale as she listened; but she said, calmly, “Does this man have enough to eat?”

“How should I know, my dear? I suppose that depends on the humanity of his keeper.”

“Are his friends allowed to see him?”

“I believe that he has none. Glosher tells me that nobody has visited him except the jailer.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Caged and chained for a year in a Christian country, and not a soul to speak kindly to him, or tell him of Jesus who died for him!”

Mr. Britton moved uneasily. “That is owing to the fact that there is no regular chaplain; there could not be, of course. This is a mere country jail, with the one inmate—not a penitentiary.”

“You are going to him tomorrow, Edward!”

“I?”

Mrs. Britton did not look up. She was trimming the lamp, and her fingers move nervously. There was a moment of silence. Mr. Britton’s pale blue eyes stared vacantly; he pulled unconsciously at his neat whiskers, ran his forefinger about the pretty white band around his neck. This was no question of albs and altar cloths, of baptizing babies or preparing timid young girls for confirmation. It was as if a door had suddenly opened into the horrors of the shadow of death, and a voice commanded him to walk through it.

“Yes, I will go” he said, humbly, after a while. But he was taciturn for the rest of the evening, and bore himself toward his wife with an aggrieved air.

The next morning Mr. Britton rose with an exalted sense of heroism upon him. Phoebe was right. Undoubtedly this was a part of his high duty. But he really, after all, did not think much of the message he was to carry—that was all such a familiar subject to him. He was a little disappointed that Lodon, the jailer, received his proposal to visit the prison without surprise or admiration.

“I thought it was time some of you preachers was seein’ to him,” he said dryly. “Can’t take you in till evenin’, though. I’m powerful pushed getting’ in my hay just now.”

He was surprised, too, to find Phoebe ready to go with him, as she always did when he visited the sick.

“I have put up a few peaches and cakes, and some salve. They tell me the chains have worn into the flesh.”

“Salve and peaches! Why, this is a murdered who killed an old, feeble man. He is under sentence of death.”

“He is a man, after all, I suppose,” said Mrs. Phoebe, calmly packing a jar of honey in her basket.

When Lodon that evening led them through the yard, overgrown with lilac and Jamestown weed, Mr. Britton felt his heart sicken within him. The great iron door of the jail creaked on its hinges. They entered a low brick passage. Lodon locked the door behind him, and drew the bars from a heavy iron trap which closed the stairs. In another moment they would be shut in with this human beast.

“I have not thought of what I should say to him, and his one chance of salvation is in me,” thought the clergyman, his foot upon the stair. “One moment, Lodon. I—I feel ill. This air---“

Phoebe touched him on the hand. She was very pale, but she smiled cheerfully. “It is only a man just like yourself whom you are going go to meet, Edward,” she whispered.
A man like himself! Really, Phoebe had the strangest way of expressing herself! He passed on, sustained by a fresh sense of dignity and virtue.

Lodon, hurrying through the dark upper passage, stopped at another iron door, rusted with age.

“Now”—turning the key in the lock.

The cage was a network of iron bars, about fifteen feet square, in the centre of a large room, into which the setting sun shone warmly and softly. The air was pure, the cage was scrupulously clean. The murderer was in the centre of it. Phoebe shut her eyes before she could go near him.

“If it was my brother now?” she thought.

When she opened them he was an honest-eyed countryman, clad in decent homespun, rising to meet her with a sudden pleased smile.

I did not know that a lady was coming,” he said. The voice was unembarrassed and sincere.

Mr. Britton hastily went up to the cage, “Who is that?” he cried. “Merciful God! John Matlack! Is that you?”

The two men stared at each other, the iron grating between them. The clergyman held to the bars with both hands; the shock of shame for his old friend was so great that he stammered and choked and then stood dumb. But John Matlack eagerly thrust out his chained hand.

“Edward! God bless you! I—I have not seen a face that I knew for a year, and now you—you!”

He was weak and emaciated with long confinement. The tears ran down his cheeks; he had to raise both bloodless hands together to his face to wipe them off. It was a pitiful sight. But Mr. Britton did not give him his hand. It was John Matlack; but it was no less a murderer. Phoebe thrust hers through the bars. The pity, the tender mercy, of all the good motherly women in the world seemed to look on him through her eyes.

“Why, I have heard so much of you, John. You were on the farm with Edward. He has told me of all the ploughing and ‘coon hunting and-- Oh, Edward, speak to him!”

“Why are you here, John?” Mr. Britton took out his cambric handkerchief and wiped his neatly shaven face nervously. Matlack stood upright and looked him steadily in the eyes. The chain from his leg to the floor creaked like some live thing as he moved.

“Why am I here? Because I have been found guilty of the murder of an old man, and sentenced to be hung for it. That’s why. I have but a few days longer to live.”

“But you did not do it!—you did not do it!” cried Phoebe, breathlessly. “You can not think him guilty, Edward. Look at his face.”

Her husband answered the demand in the prisoner’s eyes rather than her words.

“God knows with what pain I see you here,” he said, evasively. “You are the last man whom I should have through capable of such a crime.”

“If I found you here, Ned, I would have known you incapable of it, and have asked no further,” said the prisoner, with a quiet dignity.

He turned away. The chain, to Phoebe’s excited eyes, crept hideously across the floor, held him, dragged him back. Mr. Britton feebly pulled at his side whiskers. John Matlack, his old playfellow—murder? It was incredible. And yet he had been tried and sentenced by law, and to Mr. Britton the law was an infallible twin to power with the Church.

“Thar’s somethin’ to be said on Mr. Matlack’s side,” Lodon began, slowly, tapping on the cage with his keys to emphasize certain points. “Evidence was circumstantial wholly. Old gentlemen that was killed hed started a mica mine in the Nantahila Mountings. Mr. Matlack hyar was boss. Thar was hard words between them more than once; that was proved on the trial. The old man was powerful aggravatin’. The day afore the murder he came up from Ashville, a-lookin’ into things, and a-swearin’ tremenjus, callin’ Matlack a swindler and what not. Matlack he answers back, with another, as how he’d be even with him and turned and walked off; and them as stood by said they knew he meant it. That night the old man staid up in the cuttin’-house, lookin’ over accounts. Them mine houses is nothin’ but plank sheds, you know. The next mornin’ he was found lyin’ on the pile of mica chips, stone-dead, with a bullet through his heart.”

“That was no proof!” cried Phoebe.

“No, but you hevn’t heerd me out, Mistress Britton,” said Lodon, warming in the recital. “A bit of the waddin’ was found with the bullet, and it as a scrap of an envelope directed to ‘John Mat’—the rest to swar that he was a home all night, taking’ care of their sick boy. That was plenty mor’d hev sworn they didn’t believe John Matlack could do such a thing nohow. But that kind of testimony isn’t law.”

Matlack had remained with his back turned to them, unmoved while Lodon told his story. The truth was that Mr. Britton’s belief in his guilt had stunned him. He had grown used to looking the coming death in the face. After a year of solitude this friend of his youth had suddenly appeared—and condemned him. It was a fresh cut of pain, and a deep one. When his wife was named, however, he turned quickly and glanced at Phoebe.

“Yes. Where is she? What can I do for her, or for you?” demanded that little woman, her cheeks on fire.

“Nothing. She is ill—dying, they tell me. I could save her if I were near her. She knows whether I am innocent or not, thank God!”

“I know it. You don’t suppose that I believe that evidence. Not a syllable of it.”

Mr. Britton was miserable enough while all this was going on. He would have silenced his wife if he could; but how could he? John had been like a brother to him when they were both hard-worked, farm boys. The law could not be wrong. It was his duty as a man of God to exhort this criminal to repentance; but when he looked into the candid, noble face the words died on his lips.

“Who was this murdered man?” he stammered, not knowing what to say.

“Surely you have heard,” said Matlack—“Matthew Pansent.”

“Pansent? –dead?” Mr. Britton began slowly to pace up and down on the cell, as was his habit when he was studying his sermons, his white fingers working with his collar. Phoebe looked after him in terror: she alone saw how greatly he was shaken. He understood it now. John Matlack was innocent. It was he who was the murderer. God had given him his wish.

He went up to the cage; but his jaws refused to move when he would have spoken to Matlack.

“I had forgotten that he was you stepfather, Ned,” John said. “But I had nothing to do with his death. He tried me hard, but I never would have harmed the old man.”

“I would. There never was a time when I should not have been glad to see him dead. It is I who ought to be chained there, not you.” Mr. Britton said this in a low, rapid whisper, and then went straight to the door. He moved and looked like a man demented.

For a week after this night Mr. Britton shut himself up in his chamber. In his agony of remorse and humiliation he acted very like a child, and Phoebe was as a mother to him. He protested that he would leave the ministry—even the Church. Blood-guiltiness was on his soul, if not his hands. He never had understood the religion he taught: he never had known the Saviour whom he had showed to others.

Phoebe left him only to visit the innocent man in the cage. She read to him, wrote letters to his wife for him and about him.

One day she came home trembling and little disposed to talk.

“The Governor has set the day for—for—“

“The execution?”

“Yes. Next Friday. He has but four days to live.”

“He will die an innocent man.”

“Why need he die at all?”

“There is no chance. The Governor has been besieged for his pardon. It is necessary to have an example. There has been too great laxity, it appears, in this part of the State.” He had been trying to read a circular letter from the bishop, but he threw it down and wandered on. “Why, look at us, Phoebe! I ought to be in his place, and here I am, with my priestly coat and white surplice, regarded as a godly man. John Matlack is in chains, and next Thursday a rope about his neck! Think what justice there is in that! Think—“

But Mrs. Britton went hastily into her own room. She was not fond of thinking.

“What is to be done?” she said to herself. When she came back her countenance was rigid as that of a middle-aged woman. She spoke no more of the prisoner.

She went down the next day, as usual, to the jail. She stopped in her reading once or twice, looking at Matlack with a shudder.

“What is it that you see, ma’am?” asked Lodon, with surprise, for she was not a nervous woman.

“Oh, the chain. It seems alive to me. It creeps after him, holds him until they are ready to murder him.”

“You ought not to come back here, Mrs. Britton,” said Matlack. “It is too great a strain on any woman.”

She looked at him. Considerate of her, with death just at hand!—with a wife and child in the world whom he should never see again! But Matlack bore himself with the same gravity and simplicity in the face of his terrible fate as he had done when he was a boy. Nothing but his deathly pallor told of any suffering.

“Do not come to-morrow,” he said, when she rose to go. “There will be another day. I should like to give you another message then for—“

“For your wife and little Charley. I know, John.”

“There’s nobody else I’d ask to see them, though some of my old friends have been down this week. They’re very kind. But you—“

“Yes, yes. Good-by now,” shaking his hand and turning away. “Oh, this copy of hymns—I have been reading to you. I will leave it.” She handed It to Lodon for inspection—a few small sheets of manuscript bound in a thick parchment cover. The jailer noticed how cold her hand was as he touched it. He passed the roll through the bars of the cage.

“You will find much comfort in some of them” she said, looking Matlack steadily in the eye—“especially in the first.”
As she turned away, the cell grew suddenly dark before her, and the hideous clank of the chain jeered and mocked at her.

The street was drowsier than usual that evening. It was the day for the weekly mail to come in, but the carrier had arrived, and his mule and cart were put away, and all the excitement was over. Most of the houses were already closed for the night. The doctor and squire were seated in front of the store, finishing a game of draughts by the fading twilight, and a negro near by was “picking” a banjo, while another shuffled a doleful jig and sang, “Fahwell foreber—oh-h, foreber.”

Mrs. Britton laughed nervously. The moon hung low in the horizon, heavy masses of fog drove through the valley. She remembered that the moonlight would only last an hour. She looked out to the vast sweep of mountain ranges. Once safe in these impenetrable solitudes, no fugitive could be discovered, thank God! There was a little chamber, too, where a young wife lay near to death, with her boy beside her, waiting to hear that her husband had died upon the gallows. If—

Mr. Britton happened to read that night the story of how Lazarus was snatched out of the jaws of death. His wife listened, with her head lying on her folded arms on the table.

“This man too, O God!” she said.
When her husband read the evening prayers she did not kneel, and did not know he was praying.

Mr. Britton touched her gently after a while. “You are feverish, my dear; you need rest,” he said.

She walked quietly to the window. The fog had blotted street and houses out of sight, and without was the silence of death.

Early the next morning a commotion was heard on the street below, shrill cries and men running. Mrs. Britton was already seated, her sewing in hand. She stitched on carefully without lifting her eyes.

Lame Joe tapped at the door. He stuttered with excitement when Mr. Britton opened it.

Mr. Britton ran down the stairs to join the excited crowd below. Phoebe did not move, but as she sewed her eyes shone and tears feel like rain.

Four years later Mr. Britton sat reading the newspaper one evening to his wife. He was a changed man in these four years, it was reported in church gossip. His sermons were no longer the fine efforts of literary skill and scholarship which they had been at first, but there was a humility and earnestness in them, like the voice of a man saved from shipwreck crying to his fellows, which gave them strange power.

“Look at this,” he said, laying the newspaper before her, and pointing to a passage. His finger shook as he did it.
“E. P. Connors, who died in the State-prison on Tuesday, confessed to the murder of Matthew Pansent, in this county five years ago. His anti-mortem statement was sworn to before a magistrate. This is the murder for which Matlack, as our readers will remember, was convicted, and is still under sentence of death.”

Mrs. Britton did not say a word after she had read the paragraph, but she rose quickly and left the room. She came back carrying a folded paper; she was evidently struggling with deep controlled excitement.

“Will you send this telegram to-night to California?”

He took it gravely. “Is it to John Matlack?”

“Yes.”

“What of him, Phoebe?”

“He is with his wife and boys. This is all he needs in life.”

“You have been his friend all this time?”

“Yes, Edward.”

“I thought so.” He laughed to himself when he went out of the room. Then he put on his overcoat and took the telegram to the office.

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"The Clergyman's Wife" February 1865Peterson's Magazine

Description

“The Clergyman’s Wife"

By the Author of “The Second Life.”

Parsonage, August lst.It rains to-night, a sharp, sleety rain, driving against the windows with a low continual moan. It puts me in mind of the Banshee old[1] Norry used to belong to our family, and who cried to warn them of death or danger. I wish it had been a “Brownie,”[2] instead, who did all the work while the mistress slept. The Scotch are cannier about even their guardian spirits than the poor Irish. What a dull, foreboding night! I looked out of the window just now, and saw the rain drenching garden, and stable, and road, and murky clouds gathering every moment to make this night heavier. Inside, the little wood-fire burns pleasantly, though it is late, one o’clock, and baby is asleep in his cradle, where I can touch him with my foot as I sew. John has been sleeping, too, for some hours. Where I sit, I can see his face, sallow and haggard, against the pillow—different from the ruddy, cheerful face that belonged to my lover ten years ago! Years that had cut hard and sharply into it.

What a hard fight it has been for him to find bread and butter for the children and me; and how nobly he has fought it only God and I know. Day after day, month after month, in all those ten years, the same constant strain on mind and body, and never once one selfish thought—all done for “Kitty and the boys.” I sometimes think the only rest he knows is in his sermons; he seems to throw off then the hard, griping present, and feel that he is himself again—the free, bold thinker that in Boston, before we were married, stood on a platform with his own peers and was recognized by them. He gave up much to preach God’s word when he abandoned the law—place, and fame, and chances of advancement. I often doubt when I look at his dull boorish hearers in this little village, and notice how the discourse (almost incomprehensible to them) invariably assumes a logical form, whether he did not also give up his true stand-point and work. But God knows. I cannot help looking back to-night. Not at our gay, careless life before we married, but since then—here. When I remember the scraping to keep body and soul together on the pittance the church gives us—the sickness, the hoarding, cent by cent, to buy even this poor furniture we have—I do not wonder that John lies there, fagged and worn out, a wreck of his former self. And I could do so little to help! Sewing and cooking for the wee ones brings in no money. I am tougher and stronger than John to-day, though I used to be a delicate girl. I remember how he used to fret at seeing my hands chapped and hard with the washing the first year we were married; (I had a pretty hand then) but we have had too serious troubles since to think of such trifles

Well, about this visit to Boston. I can’t help talking to my journal. John and I have somehow grown silent together. At first we kept up the habit we had in our courtship of reading together, discussing the news and current literature of the day; but, after a year or two, we could not afford to take the papers, nor buy books, and soon our usual topics became—how the flour was to be got, or the children shod for winter. I am sorry. One feels hungry for something outside of this, as Herder,[3] when dying, asked for a great thought to refresh him. I feel sometimes as if my soul were so drenched with thoughts of dollars and cents that it was hardly worth saving for heaven. It is like opening a safety-valve to complain or talk to this journal. I write in it, therefore, a line or two at night when I have sewed until midnight. That is my stopping-place.

But, the visit. John was very much averse to it at first—is so still, indeed. But Charles Lowther is so old a friend that he dares to speak more plainly than any one else would; and this summer, when giving us his usual invitation, he wrote, “You have refused me these ten years, Curtis, but now I will take no more refusal. You require rest imperatively; heart and liver and brain are overworked, and to persist in your course is simply suicide. I write as a physician, now, not merely your friend. I don’t want any of the children; send them out wholesale to Deacon Simms. Let Mrs. Curtis have a breathing space—heaven knows she needs it. Next time the bairns[4] shall come. Our place abuts directly on the sea, so you shall have all the benefit of surf-bathing without undergoing the fashion or vulgarity of Cape May hotels as of old.” It was long before John would consent. He has grown morbid, sunk down in a sort of dull apathy, from which nothing rouses him. When at last it was decided we should go, he could not bear to be separated from the children. “You and the boys have to be my world, Kitty,” he said. “What do I care for this world of beau-esprits[5]that Lowther will have gathered about him? Let us rest in our humble little nest here, and ‘let the world go by.’” I was very glad that John loved his home so well; but still I thought a breath of fresh sea air would be a good thing. If the “nest” did not need carpeting and doing up so dreadfully, I would like it better.

So we are going. Tom and the twins and George are off on Sunday to Deacon Simms’ to romp in the hay-fields; and aunt Ann will keep Jem, who is two years old, and large enough to leave, though I call him “baby,” yet. We will start on Monday. I have just finished John’s three new shirts; with those and his old ones he will do very well; and he has, of course, a good suit of broadcloth—one worldly advantage in being a clergyman—at any rate. For me, I can whiten my old straw bonnet over some brimstone and trim it up and my wedding silk has been dyed black, and really looks as good as new. It amuses me to think of the preparation I would have made for such a visit ten years ago; but since John has ceased to notice how I was dressed, or looked, I never think of it, only to be clean. Our love is founded now on something deeper than mere externals. Well, to-morrow I will be busy preparing the children’s clothes, so I will go to bed.

Rock Point, August 7th.—We have been here for three days now at Mr. Lowther’s country-seat. The sea air and bathing has already made a change in John’s face, I fancy, given it a color. But he grows more depressed and home-sick every day. He came to our room just now, where I was writing. “Let us cut this visit short, Kitty,” he said. “I am like a plant torn up by the root away from our home and the children. I suppose solitude has made me morbid and over sensitive. But I am not fit for this sort of life. I want to go back.” He paced backward and forward through the room. “It galls me to the soul,” he said, at last, wiping his forehead “to contrast Lowther’s way of living and ours. For myself, I don’t heed it. I chose it for a pure motive. But when I think of the chances of which my boys are deprived, the culture, the refinement of taste and manners—the width of thought, it cuts to the quick. To think my sons must grow up boors, half their days given to scraping and saving of a dollar, while Lowther’s, because of the possession of a little more lucre, start high and fair in the race.” I did not answer John. I thought him unreasonable and morbid, and, also, to tell the truth, that a little intercourse with his fellow-man was just what he needed. For our boys, there is no need of their growing up boors, if they do not draw in culture with every breath, as the Lowther children. I did not tell John how heart-sick I was to be with them, especially poor baby; nor how oppressed I am by the different atmosphere here. We will stay the fixed time, I am resolved, if it will benefit John. I understand the different influences which the Lowthers [sic] life and ours will exert on our children. It is an education simply to be in this place. Nature and art have done everything for them. The house is distant a few miles from Nahant, on the same range of sea-rocks, commanding a view of the sea and coast for many miles, the surf dashes up on the lower ground of the park: from the upper windows of the house the ocean is seen alone, unblemished by any glimpse of land, in all it eternal variety of colors and meanings; and there is no such educator as the sea; no such help to the development of a vigorous manhood. The establishment itself is no showplace, but founded on a wide, solid affluence, large and generous in all its details; a thorough home, with well-wooded pleasure-grounds, stabling, dogs, stock, pets of every kind; in-doors, and atmosphere of comfort and beauty, pictures, books, music, guests coming and going, a well-trained band of noiseless servants; different from our little parlor with its faded carpet, and the children’s mother, maid of all work! Yet the faded carpet was worked and saved for during a whole year, and sewed in such a happy, jolly fashion! John trying to help me by threading the needles and joking all the time. Oh, well! God knows what is best for our boys.

August 8th.—Some old friends of John’s came last night whom Mr. Lowther had brought to meet him; the Quaker reformer, R——, and Dr. P——. Already John is coming back to his old self with them, forgetting his nervous wretchedness of yesterday. If this rest only does work a cure! I should not heed any discomfort if there be a chance of that. And discomfort there is none, except home-sickness; for the dear boys, and then—it is trifling to mention such a trifling thing—but Mrs. Lowther, with all her cordial kindness, seems somehow to regard me as a martyr, never forgets the girl I was before I married, and evidently looks on me as a physical and mental wreck, a sacrifice to the making of a “bad match.” It is irritating to be pitied, and especially to be pitied for being “a wreck.”

August 9th, Evening.—This has been one of the happiest days of my life. A royal day in itself, brimming over with clear, cool sunshine and harvest-scented airs. Then it does my very soul good to see John so looked up to, met with a certain deference as he is by these scholars and men of note. He is in his right place now. I sat this morning watching him on the piazza, the center of an animated group, his eyes kindled, and a smile on his face; the old, delicate, shrewd smile, I have not seen there since the first years of our marriage. The presence of these old friends, this attrition, even of a few hours, of his mind with kindred minds, has brought back the true tone to it. I would not have believed a few healthy hours could have worked so apparent a change. He is becoming, too, more en rapport with the other guests. There are many of these. The house is large, and it is the delight of the Lowthers to gather around them rare and fine minds at this season, when they can offer their friends such unusual pleasures of hospitality as the private sea-bathing and sailing.

Last night Miss C— arrived, of whose music we have heard so much. I saw her walking with John before tea this evening, and immediately after they went into the music-room, where we all silently followed at the first touch of her fingers on the piano. She has marvelous skill, and a wonderful delicacy of expression in her music, and voice, too—for she sang one or two songs only, Shubert’s ballads, and Adelaida.[6] I was glad she possessed the tact to choose just those that would chord with John’s mood. Music used to be a passion with him; and it is years since he has heard anything better than the church choir, with old Hummell, the tailor, as leader. He came and sat down in the window by me—the lamps were not lighted, and the others were scattered about the room in noiseless groups—and I could see the slow tears of intense feeling come into his eyes now and then

“It was like coming to my old home again,” he said to me, when we were alone. “But I forgot, Kitty, you are no musician.” It hurt me that he should say that. I cannot bear that we should be separated in any thought or feeling; and, besides, though I do not understand it scientifically, I always thought I comprehended the meaning of music. However, it has been a happy day. Now that John feels at home, and begins to enter into his life here with zest, I can be more contented; all I need is to get into a quiet corner, and watch him.

August 15th.—It is selfish in me to be discontented where John is so thoroughly happy; but my heart aches to see the children. And then, except the pleasure of seeing him enjoy himself, there is little I care for here. I do not relish reading as I did, when it was a habit with me; and I am always conscious, in making up their little parties for sailing or riding, Mrs. Curtis is asked only from courtesy—so I find some excuse to remain at home. I am dull; have lost the habit of expressing myself easily; and even when I am amused, show it but little. I don’t blame them if they look on the silent, middle-aged Mrs. Curtis, as a dead-weight. A man does not grow old so fast as a woman. John is, on the other hand, of all the guests, the one most eagerly surrounded and sought for. I find Mr. Lowther has told John’s story to these people, and the sacrifice he made to speak the truth—so he has become a kind of hero among them. He hardly understands it, for I never told him when I felt his life to be, how worthy reverence. I love him, and I thought he knew. Something about him, too, seems to appeal to the better part of all these men and women, and causes them to cluster about him, to try to enter into personal relations with him—and he is ready to do that. His delicate instincts; his keen sensitiveness to pleasure and pain; his personal magnetism, make it almost impossible for any one of culture and feeling to come near him, and not feel that this man is something to him, personally, which no other man ever was. It amuses me to see how even his sickly pallor, and picturesque, fastidious face, add to his attraction in the eyes of these young girls from the city.

I set myself to write all this down as a punishment for having felt selfishly lonely last night, when the boating party stayed out late coasting about in the moonlight. There was society enough in the drawing-room and library, but I felt lost without John, always—so I crept off to my own room and cried myself to sleep, thinking of our little home and the boys.

August 18th.—I begin to count the days of our stay here. I wish we were at home. It is harder to be unselfish here than in our own old ways of jogging on. Ugly fancies and doubts creep into my mind which never were there before. I wonder, sometimes, if I was the proper wife for John; if there are not needs and tastes in his nature which I do not satisfy. And it is such trifles that have made me feel thus, I am ashamed almost to recount them: such as the overheard question of an Irish chamber-maid—“Was you woman in black Mr. Curtis’s mother, or wife?” That was the first. I smiled when I heard her, but I could not help looking in the glass. I never before felt how broken I was. It shocked me to see the pinched, thin face, with the dark circles under the eyes, and the stooped shoulders, on which my dress hung flabby and ill-fitting. I seemed destined to overhear no good of myself without being a listener. This morning I was in one of the bathing-houses when Miss C—— and the old Quaker, R——, John’s friend, passed, on their way to the beach. They stopped to look at my husband, who was seining with some fishermen. “It is a ‘most delicate spirit’ which dwells in that frail body,” he said. “Yes,” she replied, “but—pardon such a feminine question—how came he to be mated with that wife of his? She appears to be dull and cloddish, utterly incapable of comprehending him.” He answered, hesitatingly, “She had great beauty, I have heard.” “It is scarcely possible to credit,” with a polite sneer, such as women give so easily: “if so, he bought it dearly. He seems to me to have been starving, for mental food as well as physical.” It was brutal; but the woman did not know she gave the stab, of course. After I came up to the house, I sat down in my chamber, sick at heart as never before. John came in to prepare for dinner, I turned my back, looking out of the window to hide my swollen eyes. Presently I rose to pin on a clean collar—the only change of dress I had to make. John came over, and looked at me from head to foot with a critical, vexed air. “Why do you that eternal black gown?” he said. “It gives you the look of a mute at a funeral, Kitty. And your hair—could you not arrange it to give you a more girlish air? Mrs. F—— has the eye of an artist; her coiffure makes a picture of her face—couldn’t you catch an idea from her?” Now it was weak to be hurt by these careless words, dropped as he pulled about the articles on the dressing-table, looking for his pencil. But it did hurt; and after he was gone, I looked at the sallow face in the mirror, and pulled the folds of the old dyed gown—my only one—with bitterer tears than ever I thought to shed. I had great beauty—if it was gone now. I thought I had earned love from him founded on something deeper. I had neglected my dress, my person; had I time to “make a picture of my face,” with the dinner to cook, the ironing to finish, and five boys to sew and patch for? and that, day after day, for months and years. Going down to dinner I looked at the other women at the table. I did not wonder my dress irritated and disgusted him. There were none of them who had not tact and means enough to suit their garments to their age and figure—the most simple often the most becoming. I saw my mistake; the same money would have bought me a pretty warm-colored robe as I used to dye this dingy bit of old finery. Well, John’s love surely does not depend on the color of a gown. It will all be right when we go home.

August 20th.—We are not going soon. Mr. Lowther told me, to-day, my husband had consented to remain another fortnight, as the sea air and water proved beneficial. I hope it may be true, but to my eyes his face has a relaxed, haggard look I never saw there. I fear the reaction when the season of indulgence is over, and we go back to the old drudgery. For me—but I will not dwell on the morbid fancies of these last two days. John is anxious to remain, and that is enough. I never have questioned his authority, and will not now, unless I think it harmful to his soul, as well as body, to stay in this house. What have I said? Not matter; let it go.

I never knew my husband so intensely alive as now; every nerve and feeling seems sentient, ready to give and receive emotion. It may be the sudden relaxing of the bow after so long and painful a strain; I don’t know. He has found a quick and chording echo, too. She came day before yesterday—this Miss M‘Donald, of whom we had heard so much, entered the drawing-room after dinner, when the brilliant gaslights and groups, scattered all about the rooms, gave a proper eclat to her appearance. I was sitting near John, who was playing chess with Col. Shaw, when I saw him suddenly pause, knight in hand, with a half exclamation, and a bright flush of pleasure on his face. I turned and felt the same glow, as if a beautiful picture had suddenly been placed before me. The arch opening into the library was concealed by heavy, dark velvet curtains; between these, and holding them apart with each hand, so as to form a drapery about her, stood the most curious-looking girl I had ever seen, leaning slightly forward, her eyes glancing around the room with a look of childish eagerness. The tableau was so singularly beautiful, that, for a moment, there was a sudden silence; then Mrs. Lowther hastened forward, and the others gathered around this apparently most welcome of all guests. I have a man’s love for woman’s beauty; and I confess that from my corner, glancing over my netting-needles, I spent the evening watching this girl, whose every pose and look made a new and piquant effect. Her fragile figure gives her the appearance of extreme youth; she has the rare combination of pale golden hair, and exceedingly dark, large eyes, brows and lashes; her skin is delicately tinted as an infant’s. Her manner that night was simple, genuine, brimming over with an innocent gayety. I turned to John at last to see if he were as interested and amused as I; but, his game finished, he was watching her furtively as he talked, with his faced heated, and eye kindled. I did not wonder, remembering what a thirsty, keen eye he has for beauty, and how he detects it, sleuth hound-like, hide in what corner it will. And it is so long since he has been gratified by either nature or art. He was presented to this Gertrude M‘Donald, and talked to her a few moments. “She has nothing in her,” he said to me, after we had gone upstairs, “a mere ignorant, artless school-girl. But her power of expression, in face and form, is something marvelous.” She wasted but little time in showing him his mistake in rating her. The next day he sought her out, simply, I knew, as I should have sought for a song or picture that once had given me pleasure. She came to the sofa where I was at work, and sat down with him; they talked of books, of politics, religion, with the same gay, fresh naivete on her part, breaking forth, now and then, into some saying, startling from its novelty and truth. I as well as John was amazed; her mind seemed capable of as many graceful and new attitudes as her body. John was delighted. “She has the brain of a poet, and the soul of a little child,” he said to Lowther, enthusiastically. A scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulder was the only reply.

August 22nd.—I think I can understand why John follows this girl so hungrily; she is expression in body and soul, if I may so try to make my meaning clear to myself; every least thought or feeling which rises in her own brain, or which she catches from others, she dramatizes by her look or words in an infinite tact and beauty. It is a new sensation to John, he has been so long shut in on himself, compelled to live a self-regarding life, as concerns his thought, that this free demonstrative utterance of inner life of all that women usually hold secret—an utterance, too, so exquisite that his taste is pleased and stimulated by it, is just what he craves. His curiosity will soon be satisfied, I am sure. For Miss M‘Donald there is such an evident zest in their intercourse for her, that she reminds me of an actor, who, finding one high appreciative witness in the audience, “plays up” to him.

August 24th.—The movements of this girl have strange fascination for me; if no other reason than that others, noticing the attraction she has over my husband, watch me, askance, with curious, amused eyes. Surely, it has not come to that! That I am to be degraded into the position of a neglected, jealous wife. Yet I cannot help following her every step with a quick throbbing interest, and a sickening dread of I know not what. This morning, contrary to my usual custom, I accompanied the sailing party. John looked dully surprised, but indifferent, and in a few moments forgot my presence altogether. They were fishing; had one or two fishermen on board to direct the amateurs. By these men, Miss M‘Donald arranged her basket, and, dressed in her dark merino wrapper, her hair snuggly tucked away in a hat, gave herself up to the business of the day. She came to fish—and she fished, disregarding the rest of the party with an earnest zeal that was, even to me, irresistibly captivating and innocent. To-night—a change in the programme. Von der Wart, the German litterateur, whom Boston has for its pet now, came out to dine, and in the evening read for us two or three scenes from Egmont,[7] and some of Schiller’s[8] shorter poems. Afterward, Burger[9] being alluded to, Mrs. Lowther asked Miss M‘Donald to recite one of his ballads. She assented good-humoredly, and chose Lenore. I noticed that there was a general stir and hush in the rooms, as though people settled themselves as to the enjoyment of a treat. She began in a low, trembling voice, which lost its embarrassment in a moment, but remained subdued, sinking to a whisper in the most effective parts. But the power of the woman! I have seen great actors in my day, but none ever startled and magnetized me as this one, for a mistress of the art she assuredly is. When she uttered the fatal words which sent the soul who spoke them to hell, my blood chilled as though she were, in truth, the lost Lenore. But, oh! the dilated horror of her eye—the anguish in her low cry,

I looked at John. His lips were white and compressed, his eye followed her like a man charmed. Had the cry a meaning for him then? Had he something lost out of his life forever, which might have been, and was not? He rose and left the room. I dared not follow him. “Mr. Curtis is nervous,” Mr. Lowther said, politely, when the reading was over. “I don’t wonder Lenore depressed him; Miss M‘Donald would have made a great actress had she gone on the stage. I prefer her rendering of several parts of Macbeth and Othello to Fanny Kemble’s.”[11] My husband returned when the evening was nearly over, but sat in a retired corner and studiously avoided her. He was unusually kind in his manner to me, as though he would atone for some wrong. When we were breaking up for the night, an exquisite thrush-like voice began to warble, overhead. Buona Notte,[12] with such delicate purity that one held their breath to listen. Looking up, we saw the beautiful, childish face peeping through the heavy balustrades, aglow with mirth, nodding good-night. “How delicious Gertrude is!” said Miss C——. “One would not weary through eternity with such a woman!” My husband made no answer; as he turned away, he drew a heavy breath, gnawing his lips as though to hold himself quiet.

August 30th.—I dare not write down the agony of these days. I can do nothing. I dare not speak; remonstrance would only do evil by baring his own heart to him. I can just creep to my own room, and cry to God to have mercy on us both. John suffers as much as I. He shrinks from the girl; for days absents himself from her altogether, clinging to my side, but with a dull, lost look; then, as if abandoning himself to some delirium, pursues her, haunts her every step with such an almost savage persistency, that she seems frightened at times. He is too nervous and single-minded a man to conceal anything. The workings of his mind as palpable as day; and he seems so terrified at himself that he forgets that I, too, know and suffer. To-day I asked him to go home, “Anything is better than this,” I cried. He asked for no explanation, looked at me like a man dazed, and consented, muttering, “Perhaps if I could see the children, it would be different.” But an hour after I saw him in the conservatory, his face radiant with excitement, an eager crowd about him, laughing at his wit; and among them Miss M‘Donald. When I spoke of going home, he answered quietly, “It is impossible.” Mr. Lowther overheard us. He followed me out of the room. “It is impossible,” he said. “Be patient; you do not know all,” with an anxious look; and was thoughtful all the evening, keeping a quiet watch on John.

September 7th.—At last we have spoken. It has been my fault then! God help me! I thought I was true and faithful wife in every thought and deed. But I alone have been to blame. I see it now. I was sitting, alone, by the window, last night, looking out to the sea. It was late. I had put on a white wrapper, and loosened my hair, not meaning to go down again. I could hear Miss M‘Donald’s flute-like voice singing in the library, and knew John was there. For my own soul’s sake I was trying to keep out of this woman’s sight. I was learning to feel for her such a fierce hatred and dread, which no thought of even my meek Master could control. She was cruel, pitiless—she, with all the world to give her homage. I, with only my husband to look to for love in life or death. She had taken him from me, and lured him only to gratify the idle whim of a moment. Now that the certainty of this had come to me, I was calm. It is my nature to show no emotion when I feel most; one reason why he has fallen from me gradually in these later years.

He came in, and pausing a moment by the door, stood looking at me as I sat in the moonlight. I knew by his colorless face and burning eyes he was in a strange state of excitement; the moment had come when all would be uttered. Coming hastily toward me, he stooped down, and, passing his hand over my head, drew out the hairs, holding them up in the moonlight. “See! they glisten like a mesh of gold!” he exclaimed. “You look as you did years ago to-night, Kate!” bending my head back, and looking in my eyes. “There is the same curve of the delicate, indignant mouth, and that sad pleading in the eyes, like a frightened child’s.” “Daylight will bring back the wrinkles and the offensive haggardness,” I said, coldly drawing back. Since I had known him, years ago, he had never thus coolly criticised me. “You were beautiful, Kate,” slowly, without seeming to have heard me. “But it is not the beauty I miss, God knows,” holding his hands to his forehead. “What is it, John?” I crept up, and caught his sleeve. “Oh, my husband! my husband! I have loved you! I have tried to do what is right!” I sobbed out something of this. I dared not lean on him, scarcely could touch him, so far away from me he seemed. “I know it,” more to himself than to me. “You have done what you could. We needed money, that was the truth—and you turned drudge. It’s no time for surface-talk. I am going mad, and I must speak the truth. You have been a slave to me and our children, Kitty—but you have been no companion—I have had none. A man needs other food than bread and meat. I am weaker than other men, it may be, and have yielded sooner than I ought; but there is no power of my mind that has not lacked stimulus, no taste that has not been baffled. It seems to me that I have been dying by inches.” “And this woman, John, she helps you?” I faltered at last. His face turned paler. “Yes! She sympathizes with me—as you did once, Kitty. I feel that, innocent child though she is, I have become to her what no other man ever can be; and this feeling from her is, to me, what the Prophet’s hand laid on the dead bones was. My old self has wakened again!” There was a long silence. Then I faced him. “Why do you come to me with this? Do you think I am iron or clay? Have you forgotten that I, too, can suffer?” He looked at me; there was a dull surprise in his face. “You have hid it well, if you suffered, Kitty. I come to you because I must speak, or go mad. It has given me no happiness to know that this girl helped me. It has been like putting my hand into hell to find the leaves of the tree of life.” “Is your religion nothing? Has this been a lie you have preached?” I cried. He paced through the room with slow, even strides, turning his head, monotonously, from side to side, like a man distraught. “It is no lie. But I cannot understand why it seems only a cold form of words to me now. A man’s animal and mental nature count for something.” “Yes, you trampled them down in these last years, and they master you now,” I said. “It may be—I am weak—I’m very weak, Kate,” holding his hand to his head. I know not what power was given to me to speak to him coldly and firmly—but I did. He seemed to me like a man on the verge of a precipice, needing but a cool hand to hold him back. “You are wrong, John,” I said, looking him gravely in the face. “You think this girl loves you. You dare to compare her love for you with mine, your wife. I tell you that you are to her but one of an audience, to whom she plays a part—a sympathizing witness of her tricks and skill—no more than that.” “You do not know Gertrude.” The tone maddened me. “It may be; but I know you, my husband, and I know myself. It seems as if it were given me, in this hour, to see us both as we stand before God’s eyes. I do not ask you to remember what I have been, nor what love I bore you. Let that go. But I forewarn you, John Curtis, that when you give your love to that woman, your better self lies dead—cheated by a sham and a lie. I tell you that in those first days of our married life, when you dug the little garden, and chopped wood, whistling, on week-days, found beauty and pleasure in the sunshine or falling leaves, and preached a cheerful, courageous gospel on Sundays, you were living a higher, nobler life than now, with this mad outcry for lost opportunities and baffled tastes.” “You are bitter,” he said. “There was truth in what I said,” was my answer. “What is to be the end of this?” he asked. “God knows; for our children’s sake we cannot live apart.” He gave a sudden, half-cry. “I cannot weigh and measure probabilities. You torture me with your coldness, Catharine. Let me go. Somewhere there must be a place for me—surely, somewhere. It’s not in this world. Of all things God made, I am the most useless and helpless.” He went out as he said this. I sat quiet until it grew late, and the house was silent for the night. I went out then to look for him. Mr. Lowther met me in the lower hall. “Your husband has gone with Dr. C—— and the fishermen,” he said. John has several times gone out with the mackerel fishers, and not returned for two or three days. I was turning to go back upstairs, when Mr. Lowther called to me. “John is not well?” “No.” He paused, as if he would have said more; and then, restraining himself, bade me good-night, and entered his own room. I shall not see him for days, it may be. If I had not been “bitter,” as he said—but my brain was reeling. He “never knew I loved him!” Ten years—and all in vain!

September 8th.—Two days, and they have not yet returned. I am not uneasy; they have been gone coasting along shore as before.

Evening.—Dr. C—— has returned without John. Says that he parted from him on the beach before starting; that he seemed moody and ill; and just on the moment of embarking, withdrew his foot from the plank, and turned away down the south shore.

A Year Later.—I am calm now, and can write down the brief record of those terrible days. Whatever pain it causes me, I will write it. It may be good for me to look back to, should the sharpness of their memory ever die away. Yet it is all indistinct. I remember he was gone—the wild, frenzied search along the shore—the others following, remonstrating. It was in vain. No trace or clue to him could be found. I remember coming back; it was a day of shelving, bitter rain, and cold wind. Mr. Lowther met me. “You are imprudent,” he said; then stood, with his hat off, silent a moment. “It has come as I feared,” he said, taking my hand gently. “John has been ill for some time—more ailing than even you could perceive, or any one, but his physician. His nervous system was worn out utterly. Coming here but stimulated, did not rest it, as I hoped. He was not a sane man; remember that, Mrs. Curtis, always as your comfort for aught that passion—that he was not a sane man.” “What do you mean?” Was, Mr. Lowther——” He held my hand, stroking it as my father would do, and uttering some words of genuine sympathy; but they fell meaningless on my ear. He led me gently into the hall—I remember how they stood in groups watching me with paled faces and awe-struck eyes—and then into the long, bare dining-room, and there, stretched upon the table, I saw—what? God of mercy! spare me, if, in that moment, I cursed the day I was born—the life that had brought agony like this. They left me alone with my dead for long hours. At last, Mr. Lowther and his wife came for me. I noticed then that the clothes were dry. “Not drowned?” I asked. He shook his head, took up the ice-cold hand, ran his fingers along the arm, then looked at me, as if he had spoken, in the manner he has so often used of late, but again was silent. It did not need. I knew the word he would have said—suicide!

They let me have him to myself that night, after many doubtful looks and whispered councils. I went over it all then, from the beginning. There was no word or deed of his which did not surge up in my memory now. The lips and hands were mine to kiss, to hold—dead though they were. With morning they came to take me away. At the door, as they carried me out, they met her, laden with baskets of white flowers. After that, I remember no more for many days.

When I recovered—for my illness lasted long—I asked no questions. Long ere this his pure flesh had been laid in the earth to moulder—his memory was mine. They nursed me tenderly—the Lowthers; the other guests were gone. One bright day, when I could set up in an easy-chair, Mr. Lowther came in, and, after the usual routine of feeling my pulse, etc., sat down, and, looking me steadily in the face as he spoke, said, “You are strong enough to bear a shock, my dear madam?” I bowed my head, indifferently. If he had shown me my children dead before me, I do not think it would have brought a tear. A curious expression flickered about the corners of his mouth “A pleasant surprise, remember.” “You have brought me my boys?” “Yes. But before you see them, I wished to speak to you, on a subject that has perplexed me much. Very briefly—I mean the cause of John’s death. You can bear it?” A cold shiver ran through my veins. I tried to speak, but found I could not, sat quiet, with my hands over my eyes. “I will not pain you long,” he resumed, in a subdued voice. “It is necessary, or I would not be so apparently cruel. I know what John and you were to each other; few unions are so perfect. I know,” hesitatingly, “that at the last there was a change.” I made no reply. I sat dumb, nerveless; but every word he said struck home to the soul. “You were not aware, Mrs. Curtis, of the actual physical change wrought on John by his morbid, and, pardon me, stinted life. When I saw him last spring, looking at him as a physician, I perceived that the long nervous tension had produced insipient degrees of one of the most terrible of all maladies—I mean catalepsy.[13] I have no hesitation in saying that, if his life of privation had continued, and the painful cares from which he suffered, (the greatest of which was his grief at seeing the hardship of your life,) that death or mental derangement must have been the result. You know his sensitive, nervous organization. It was in view of all this that I almost forced you here this summer, in hopes the change might come in time to be beneficial, and also to have him under my own eyes. After his arrival, however, I found that the disease was deeper-seated than I had thought. Evidences of great cerebral excitement developed themselves daily—you know in what manner.” He waited for a reply—but I made none. I saw how cruelly blind and unjust I had been. “And you know the end.” “You wish me to understand,” I forced myself to say, at last, “that John’s death was not voluntary? that it was caused by catalepsy?” “I wish you to understand,” leaning forward and speaking gently, but with a strange meaning, “that while here this summer, he had two attacks of catalepsy. The first was concealed from you; the second occurred on the day you departed from him. The second was the cause of his apparent death.” So quietly the words were spoken, that it was some time before I observed them; then a painful, dazed doubt struck through my brain. I cried out, sharply, for I was weak, “What do you mean? What is this? For God’s sake, do not torture me thus! John is dead.” “John was dead.” He held my wrists tightly. After that I remember only a wild chaos, in which my brain reeled—outcries—attempts at explanation—to calm me—Mrs. Lowther sobbing beside me—and, at last, my husband—my cheeks in both his hands, and his former loving face smiling into mine, as I knew it in our first married years.

Days after we were sitting, all together, in the library, when the guests, who were gone, were spoken of, “Miss McDonald is in New York, giving private readings of Shakespeare, for the benefit of the Sanitary Commissions,”[14] said Mrs. Lowther, reading from a letter she had just opened. My husband glanced at my face, which grew red and pale, and smiled, “Poor, foolish Kitty!” he whispered. Afterward, when we were alone, he said, “I was conscious that night, when you thought me dead, Kate. I knew my wife then, for the first time, I think, and how she loved me. I heard Miss McDonald, too, strewing me with white roses, and posing and gesticulating over me. A living man, looking forward to being buried alive in a few hours, is apt not to bear with patience sham woe over him.

“But it did not need that, Kitty,” he said, taking me in his arms. “I was not sane when I left you. It did not need that she should disgust me to bring me back to you, when I was clothed, and in my right mind.”

We never returned to the parsonage, however, except to remove the children and our furniture. Through Mr. Lowther’s influence, John obtained a position as editor of a leading review, which gave him a free scope for his mind, a great and appreciative audience, and an income large enough to ease us both and make us feel a sure footing in the world.

John has regained strength, and color, and a certain manly self-reliance, which had nearly slipped away from him. For me, I teach the boys, preparing them for college. I do not forget (bear in mind, all wives, for whose eyes alone this story has been written) that careless dress, and disregard of appearances, on the woman’s side, invariably produces disgust on the man’s. I do not forget the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and truth; but I never fail to have my hair curled, and fresh lace at my throat, before John comes home before dinner at five.

[1] From Irish legends, a spirit whose wails foreshadow death in a house.

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"A Story of To-Day" (MARGRET HOWTH) October 1861-Atlantic MonthlyCOMPARATIVE TEXT

Description

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following text offers the original serialized version of "A Story of To-Day" with comparative annotations of revisions for the book version, Margret Howth. The only instance in which revisions are not shown is the change in spelling of "Margaret" in the serial and Davis's insistence on the spelling "Margret" for the book version because so many changes in the name would be intrusive for readers.]

Let me tell you a story of To-Day,—very homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. Let us bear [deleted: Let us bear; added: We can bear] the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand far [changed to: afar] off pitying [deleted: pitying]. I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border of the battle-field, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance they say "in the morning, 'Would God it were even!' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning!'" Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see the age as its meaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men or the bloodthirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen lights [deleted: lights; added: rights], whatever they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet hand controls us.

Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil, unlimited lives to come, as well as here, I know; but there are less partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, that do not speak to us in bayonets and victories,—Humility [deleted: Humility], Mercy, and Love. Let us not quite neglect them, however humble the voices they use may be. [changed to: Let us not quite neglect them unpopular angels though they be. Very humble their voices are, just now: though not altogether dead, I think.] Why, the very low glow of the fire upon the hearth tells me something of recompense coming in the hereafter,--Christmas-days, and heartsome warmth; in these bare hills trampled down by armed men, the yellow clay is quick with pulsing fibres, hints of the great heart of life and love throbbing within; God's [deleted: God’s] slanted sunlight would show me, in these sullen smoke-clouds from the camp, walls of amethyst and jasper, outer ramparts of the Promised Land. Do not call us traitors, then, who choose to be cool and silent through the fever of the hour,—who choose to search in common things for auguries of the hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even in these poor sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brown mould, a deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul than warring evils or [deleted: evils or] truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hint that there are yet other characters besides that of Patriot in which a man may appear creditably in the great masquerade, and not blush when it is over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in which there shall be none of the red glare of war, [changed to: in which there shall be no bloody glare]—only those homelier, subtler lights which we have overlooked. If it prove to you that the sun of old times still shines, and the God of old times still lives, is not that enough?

My story is very crude and homely, as I said,—only a rough sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs" sometimes,—a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find here: New England [deleted: New England] idyls delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends who have indenizened [edenized] themselves in everybody's home. You want something, in fact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to kindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into this commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we do not see.

Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha! that is spirit-stirring!—that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Your manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor daily necessity for bread and butter. I want you to go down into this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also a great warfare. Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though even its only end may appear to be your daily food. A great warfare, I think, with a history as old as the world, and not without its pathos. It has its slain. Men and women, lean-jawed, crippled in the slow, silent battle, are in your alleys, sit beside you at your table; its martyrs sleep under every green hill-side.

You must fight in it; money will buy you no discharge from that war. There is room in it, believe me, whether your post be on a judge's bench, or over a wash-tub, for heroism, for knightly honor, for purer triumph than his who falls foremost in the breach. Your enemy, Self, goes with you from the cradle to the coffin; it is a hand-to-hand struggle all the sad, slow way, fought in solitude,—a battle that began with the first heart-beat, and whose victory will come only when the drops ooze out, and sudden halt in the veins,—a victory, if you can gain it, that will drift you not a little way upon the coasts of the wider, stronger range of being, beyond death.

Let me roughly outline for you one or two lives that I have known, and how they conquered or were worsted in the fight. Very common lives, I know,—such as are swarming in yonder market-place; yet I dare to call them voices of God,—all!

My reason for choosing this story to tell you is simple enough.

An old book, which I happened to find to-day, recalled it. It was a ledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firm on the outside,—Knowles & Co. You may have heard of the firm: they were large woolen [changed to: woollen] manufacturers: supplied the home market in Indiana for several years. This ledger, you see by the writing, has been kept by a woman. That is not unusual in Western trading towns, especially in factories where the operatives are chiefly women. In such establishments, women [changed to: they] can fill every post successfully, but that of overseer: they are too hard with the hands for that.

The writing here is curious: concise, square, not flowing,—very legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess to read character in chirography would decipher but little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she was young, with no faith in herself. She did not look desperate, at all,—a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed in brown.

There was not much light in the office where she sat; for the factory was in one of the close by-streets of the town, and the office they gave her was only a small square closet in the seventh story. It had but one window, which overlooked a back-yard full of dyeing vats. The sunlight that did contrive to struggle in obliquely through the dusty panes and cobwebs of the window had a sleepy odor [changed to: odour] of copperas latent in it. You smelt it when you stirred. The manager, Pike, who brought her up, had laid the day-books and this ledger open on the desk for her. As soon as he was gone, she shut the door, listening until his heavy boots had thumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to the frame-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed, I said, for she was a little, little [changed to: lithe] thing) and went to work, opening the books, and copying from one to the other as steadily, monotonously, as if she had been used to it all her life. Here are the first pages: see how sharp the angles are of the blue and black lines, how even the long columns: one would not think, that, as the steel pen traced them out, it seemed to be lining out her life, narrow and black. If any such morbid fancy were in the girl's head, there was no tear to betray it. The sordid, hard figures seemed to her the [deleted: the] types of the years coming, but she wrote them down unflinchingly: perhaps life had nothing better for her, so she did not care. She finished soon: they had given her only an hour or two's work for the first day. She closed the books, wiped the pens in a quaint, mechanical fashion, then got down and examined her new home.

It was soon understood. There were the walls with their broken plaster, showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,—his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust and worn-outness pervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: a wire cage, hung on the wall, and in it a miserable pecking chicken, peering dolefully with suspicious eyes out at her, and then down at the mouldy bit of bread on the floor of his cage,—left there, I suppose, by the departed Teagarden. That was all inside. She looked out of the window. In it, as if set in a square black frame, was the dead brick wall, and the opposite roof, with a cat sitting on the scuttle. Going closer, two or three feet of sky appeared. It looked as if it smelt of copperas, and she drew suddenly back.

She sat down, waiting until it was time to go; quietly taking the dull picture into her slow, unrevealing eyes; a sluggish, hackneyed weariness creeping into her brain; a curious feeling, that all her life before had been a silly dream, and this dust, these desks and ledgers, were real,—all that was real. It was her birthday; she was twenty. As she happened to remember that, another fancy floated up before her, oddly life-like: of the old seat she made for herself [deleted: for herself] under the currant-bushes at home when she was a child, and the plans she laid for herself when she should be a woman, sitting there,—how she would dig down into the middle of the world, and find the kingdom of the griffins, or would go after Mercy and Christiana in their pilgrimage.[2] It was only a little while ago since these things were more alive to her than anything else in the world. The seat was under the currant-bushes still. Very little time ago; but she was a woman now,—and, look here! A chance ray of sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool, waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the [added: vacant] life coming rose up before her in that hard, vacant [deleted: vacant] blare of sunlight, she looked at it with the same still, waiting eyes, that told nothing. [Paragraph break added] The door opened at last, and a man came in,—Dr. Knowles, the principal owner of the factory. He nodded shortly to her, and, going to the desk, turned over the books, peering suspiciously at her work. An old man, overgrown, looking like a huge misshapen mass of flesh, as he stood erect, facing her.

"You can go now," he said, gruffly. "To-morrow you must wait for the bell to ring, and go— with the rest of the hands."

A curious smile flickered over her face like a shadow; but she said nothing. He waited a moment.

"So!" he growled, "the Howth blood does not blush to go down into the slime of the gutter? is sufficient to itself?"

A cool, attentive motion,—that was all. Then she stooped to tie her sandals. The old man watched her, irritated. She had been used to the keen scrutiny of his eyes since she was a baby, so was cool under it always. The face watching her was one that repelled most men: dominant, restless, flushing into red gusts of passion, a small, intolerant eye, half hidden in folds of yellow fat,—the eye of a man who would give to his master (whether God or Satan) the last drop of his own blood, and exact the same of other men.

She had tied her bonnet and fastened her shawl, and stood ready to go.

"Is that all you want?" he demanded. "Are you waiting to hear that your work is well done? Women go through life as babies learn to walk,—a mouthful of pap every step, only they take it in praise or love. Pap is better. Which do you want? Praise, I fancy."

"Neither," she said, quietly brushing her shawl. "The work is well done, I know."

The old man's eye glittered for an instant, satisfied; then he turned to the books. He thought she had gone, but, hearing a slight clicking sound, turned round. She was taking the chicken out of the cage.

"Let it alone!" he broke out, sharply. "Where are you going with it?"

"Home," she said, with a queer, quizzical face. "Let it smell the green fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for a chicken's soul, or body either."

"Let it alone!" he growled. "You take it for a type of yourself, eh? It has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about the barnyard."

She opened the cage.

"I think I will take it."

"No," he said, quietly. "It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden. Why, Margaret," pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars, "do you think the God you believe in would have sent it here without a work to do?"

She looked up; there was a curious tremor [changed to: tremour] in his flabby face, a shadow in his rough voice.

"If it dies here, its life won't have been lost. Nothing is lost. Let it alone."

"Not lost?" she said, slowly, refastening the cage. "Only I think"——

"What, child?"

She glanced furtively at him.

"It's a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!"

He vouchsafed no answer. She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer.

The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the great staircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the factory. It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the suburbs of trading towns. This one went round the four sides of a square, with the yard for the vats in the middle. The ladders and passages she passed down were on the inside, narrow and dimly lighted: she had to grope her way sometimes. The floors shook constantly with the incessant thud of the great looms that filled each story, like heavy, monotonous thunder. It deafened her, made her dizzy, as she went down slowly. It was no short walk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff. Margaret had a quick memory for faces; she thought she had seen this one before, as she passed,—a dark face, sullen, heavy-lipped, the hair cut convict-fashion, close to the head. She thought, too, one of the men muttered "jail-bird," jeering him for his forwardness. "Load for Clinton! Western Railroad!" sung out a sharp voice behind her, and, as she went into the street, a train of cars rushed into the hall to be loaded, and men swarmed out of every corner,—red-faced and pale, whiskey-bloated and heavy-brained, Irish, Dutch, black, with souls half asleep somewhere, and the destiny of a nation in their grasp,—hands, like herself, going through the slow, heavy work, for, as Pike the manager would have told you, "three dollars a week,—good wages these tight times." For nothing more? Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl's quiet [changed to: subtile] intuition in the instant's glance,—cheerfuller, remoter aims, hidden in the most sensual face,—homeliest home-scenes, low climbing ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,—whiskey, if nothing better: aims in life like yours, differing in degree, needing only to make them the same——did you say what?

She had reached the street now,—a back-street, a crooked sort of lane rather, running between endless piles of ware-houses. She hurried down it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was a long, tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where the dwelling-houses were,—long rows of two-story bricks drabbled with soot-stains. It was two years since she had been in the town. Remembering this, and the reason why she had shunned it, she quickened her pace, her face growing stiller than before. One might have fancied her a slave putting on a mask, fearing to meet her master. The town, being unfamiliar to her, struck her newly. She saw the expression on its face better. It was a large trading city, compactly built, shut in by hills. It had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculator concluding a keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade, having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply "for keeps"; the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a "you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the churches had not the grave repose of the old brown house yonder in the hills, where the few field-people—Arians, Calvinists, Churchmen—gathered every Sunday, and air and sunshine and God's charity made the day holy.[3] These churches lifted their hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly alms in the morning journals. To be sure, the back-seats were free for the poor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of the arches, the very purity of the preacher's style, said plainly that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a man in a red _warm-us_ to enter the kingdom of heaven through that gate.

Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned aside, and but half a river crept reluctant [changed to: reluctantly] by; the hills were but bare banks of yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading through these. Margaret climbed it slowly. The low town-hills, as I said, were bare, covered at their bases with dingy stubble-fields. In the sides bordering the road gaped the black mouths of the coal-pits that burrowed under the hills, under the town. Trade everywhere,—on the earth and under it. No wonder the girl called it a hard, scraping world. But when the road had crept through these hills, it suddenly shook off the cinders, and turned into the brown mould of the meadows,—turned its back on trade and the smoky town, and speedily left it out of sight contemptuously, never looking back once. This was the country now in earnest.

Margaret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh cold air. Far behind her, panting and puffing along, came a black, burly figure, Dr. Knowles. She had seen him behind her all the way, but they did not speak. Between the two there lay that repellant resemblance which made them like close relations.—closer when they were silent. You know such people? When you speak to them, the little sharp points clash. Yet they are the people [deleted: people; added: few whom] whom you surely know you will meet in the life beyond death, "saved" or not. The Doctor came slowly along the quiet country-road, watching the woman's figure going as slowly before him. He had a curious interest in the girl,—a secret reason for the interest, which as yet he kept darkly to himself. For this reason he tried to fancy how her new life would seem to her. It should be hard enough, her work,—he was determined on that; her strength and endurance must be tested to the uttermost. He must know what stuff was in the weapon before he used it. He had been reading the slow, cold thing for years,—had not got into its secret yet. But there was power there, and it was the power he wanted. Her history was simple enough: she was going into the mill to support a helpless father and mother; it was a common story; she had given up much for them;—other women did the same. He gave her scanty praise. Two years ago (he had keen, watchful eyes, this man) he had fancied that the poor homely girl had a dream, as most women have, of love and marriage: she had put it aside, he thought, forever; it was too expensive a luxury; she had to begin the life-long battle for bread and butter. Her dream had been real and pure, perhaps; for she accepted no sham love in its place: if it had left an empty hunger in her heart, she had not tried to fill it. Well, well, it was the old story. Yet he looked after her kindly, as he thought of it; as some people look sorrowfully at children, going back to their own childhood. For a moment he half relented in his purpose, thinking, perhaps, her work for life was hard enough. But no: this woman had been planned and kept by God for higher uses than daughter or wife or mother. It was his part to put her work into her hands.

The road was creeping drowsily now between high grass-banks, out through the hills. A sleepy, quiet road. The restless dust of the town never had been heard of out there. It (the road) [deleted: (the road)] went wandering lazily through the corn-fields, down by the river, into the very depths of the woods,—the low October sunshine slanting warmly down it all the way, touching the grass-banks and the corn-fields with patches of russet gold. Nobody in such a road could be in a hurry. The quiet was so deep, the free air, the heavy trees, the sunshine, all so full and certain and fixed, one could be sure of finding them the same a hundred years from now. Nobody ever was in a hurry. The brown bees came along there, when their work was over, and hummed into the great purple thistles on the roadside in a voluptuous stupor of delight. The cows sauntered through the clover by the fences, until they wound up by lying down in it and sleeping outright. The country-people, jogging along to the mill, walked their fat old nags through the stillness and warmth so slowly that even Margaret left them far behind. As the road went deeper into the hills, the solitude and [deleted: solitude and] quiet grew even more penetrating and certain,—so certain in these grand old mountains that one called them [changed to: it] eternal, and, looking up to the peaks fixed in the clear blue, grew surer of a world beyond this where there is neither change nor death.

It was growing late; the evening air grew [deleted: grew] more motionless and cool; the russet gold of the sunshine mottled only the hill-tops now; in the valleys there was a duskier brown, deepening every moment. Margaret turned from the road and went down the fields. One did not wonder, feeling the silence of these hills and broad sweeps of meadow, that this woman, coming down from among them, should be strangely still, with dark questioning eyes dumb to their own secrets.

Looking into her face now, you could be sure of one thing: that she had left the town, the factory, the dust far away, shaken the thought of them off her brain. No miles could measure the distance between her home and them. At a stile across the field an old man sat waiting. She hurried now, her cheek coloring [changed to: colouring]. Dr. Knowles could see them going to the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of Margaret's first day at the mill, knowing how her father and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard the old man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress of pearl gray. The neutral tint suited her well. As she stood by the window, listening gravely to them, the homely face and waiting figure came into full relief. Nature had made this [changed to: the] woman in a freak of rare sincerity. There were no reflected lights about her: no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on her soul. Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and her master alone [deleted: alone] to conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and colorless [changed to: colourless],—there were no surface tints on it,--it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her voice was [deleted: was] quiet,—out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow. I saw such hair once, only once. It had been cut from the head of a man, who, quiet and [deleted: quiet and; added: unconscious,] simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world at defiance,—Bysshe Shelley.[4]

The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took in every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which he was going to carry into battle.[5] There was neither love nor scorn in his look,—a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. He talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were, she was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the sharpened, earnest tones roused her.

"You will fail, Knowles."

It was her father who spoke.

"Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French nor German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class, as you design.”

She thought Knowles evaded the question,—wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and unready.

"It never will do, Knowles," he went on in his slow way. "Any plan, Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self-government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams."[6]

The old schoolmaster shook his head as one who knows, and tried to push the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way. Margaret lifted them back so quietly that he did not feel her.

"You'll call the Republic a sham next!" said the Doctor, coolly aggravating.

"The Republic!" The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horse scenting the battle near at hand. "There never was a thinner-crusted Devil's egg in the world than democracy. I think I've told you that before?"

"I think you have," said the other, dryly.

"You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth," said his wife, in her placid, creamy way. "It is in the blood, I think, Doctor. The Howths fought under Cornwallis, you know."[7]

"No, Dr. Knowles. Your scheme is but a sign of the mad age we live in. Since the thirteenth century, when the anarchic element sprang full-grown into the history of humanity, [8] that history has been chaos. And this republic is the culmination of chaos."

"Out of chaos came the new-born earth," suggested the Doctor.

"But its foundations were granite," rejoined the old man with nervous eagerness,—"granite, not the slime of yesterday. When you found empires, go to work as God worked."

The Doctor did not answer; sat looking, instead, out into the dark indifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him were some old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the schoolmaster's flush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused himself to gibe it into life.

"Well, Mr. Howth, what will you have? If the trodden rights of the human soul are the slime of yesterday, how shall we found our empire to last? On despotism? Civil or theocratic?”

"Any despotism is better than that of newly enfranchised serfs," replied the schoolmaster.

The Doctor laughed.

"What a successful politician you would have made! You would have had such a winning way to the hearts of the great unwashed!"

Mrs. Howth laid down her knitting.

"My dear," she said, timidly, "I think that is treason."

The angry heat died out of his face instantly, as he turned to her, without the glimmer of a covert smile at her simplicity. She was a woman; and when he spoke to the Doctor, it was in a tone less sharp.

"What is it the boys used to declaim, their Yankee hearts throbbing under their roundabouts? 'Happy, proud America!' Somehow in that way. 'Cursed, abased America!' better if they had said. Look at her, in the warm vigor of her youth, most vigorous in decay! Look at the [added: germs and] dregs of nations, creeds, religions, fermenting together! As for the theory of self-government, it will muddle down here, as in the three great archetypes of the experiment, into a puling, miserable failure!"

The Doctor did not hear. Some sharper shadow seemed to haunt him than the downfall of the Republic. What help did he seek in this girl? His keen, deep eyes never left her unconscious face.

"No," Mr. Howth went on, having the field to himself,—"we left Order back there in the ages you call dark, and Progress will trumpet the world into the ditch."

"Comte!" growled the Doctor.

The schoolmaster's cane beat an angry tattoo on the hearth.

"You sneer at Comte?[9] Because, having the clearest eye, the widest sweeping eye ever given to man, he had no more? It was to show how far flesh can go alone. Could he help it, if God refused the prophet's vision?"

"I'm sure, Samuel," interrupted his wife with a sorrowful earnestness, "your own eyes were as strong as a man's could be. It was ten years after I wore spectacles that you began. Only for that miserable fever, you could read short-hand now."

Her own quiet [deleted: quiet; added: blue] eyes filled with tears. There was a sudden silence. Margaret shivered, as if some pain stung her. Holding her father's bony hand in hers, she patted it on her knee. The hand trembled a little. Knowles's sharp eyes darted from one to the other; then, with a smothered growl, he shook himself, and rushed headlong into the old battle which he and the school master [changed to: school-master] had been waging now, off and on, some six years. That was a fight, I can tell you! None of your shallow, polite clashing of modern theories,—no talk of your Jeffersonian Democracy, your high-bred Federalism![10] They took hold of the matter by the roots, clear at the beginning.

Mrs. Howth's breath fairly left her, they went into the soul of the matter in such a dangerous way. What if Joel should hear? No doubt he would report that his master was an infidel,—that would be the next thing they would hear. He was in the kitchen now: he finished his wood-chopping an hour ago. Asleep, doubtless; that was one comfort. Well, if he were awake, he could not understand. That class of people——And Mrs. Howth (into whose kindly brain just enough of her husband's creed had glimmered to make her say, "that class of people," in the tone with which Abraham would not have spoken of Dives over the gulf)[11] went tranquilly back to her knitting, wondering why Dr. Knowles should come ten times now where he used to come once, to provoke Samuel into these wearisome arguments. Ever since their misfortune came on them, he had been there every night, always at it. She should think he might be a little more considerate. Mr. Howth surely had enough to think of, what with his—his misfortune, and the starvation waiting for them, and poor Margaret's degradation, (she sighed here,) without bothering his head about the theocratic principle, or the Battle of Armageddon. She had hinted as much to Dr. Knowles one day, and he had muttered out something about its being "the life of the dog, Ma'am." She wondered what he meant by that! She looked over at his bearish figure, snuff-drabbled waistcoat, and shock of black hair. Well, poor man, he could not help it, if he were coarse, and an Abolitionist, and a Fourierite, and——She was getting a little muddy now, she was conscious, so turned her mind back to the repose of her stocking. Margaret took it very quietly, seeing her father flaming so. But Margaret never had any opinions to express. She was not like the Parnells: they were noted for their clear judgment. Mrs. Howth was a Parnell.

"The combat deepens,—on, ye brave!"

The Doctor's fat, leathery face was quite red now, and his sentences were hurled out in a sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of a weak man. But the school master [changed to: school-master] was no weak man. His foot was entirely on his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch of the ground, from the domination of the absolute faith in the ages of Fetichism, to its pseudo-presentment in the tenth century, and its actual subversion in the nineteenth. Every step. Our politicians might have picked up an idea or two there, I should think! Then he was so cool about it, so skilful! He fairly rubbed his hands with glee, enjoying the combat. And he was so sure that the Doctor was savagely in earnest: why, any one with half an ear could hear that! He did not see how, in the very heat of the fray, his eyes would wander off listlessly. But Mr. Howth did not wander; there was nothing careless or two-sided in the making of this man,--no sham about him, or borrowing. They came down gradually, or out,—for, as I told you, they dug into the very heart of the matter at first,--they came out gradually to modern times. Things began to assume a more familiar aspect. Spinoza, Fichte, Saint Simon,—one heard about them now.[12] If you could but have heard the schoolmaster deal with these his enemies! With what tender charity for the man, what relentless vengeance for the belief, he pounced on them, dragging the soul out of their systems, holding it up for slow slaughter! As for Humanity, (how Knowles lingered on that word, with a tenderness curious in so uncouth a mass of flesh!)—as for Humanity, it was a study to see it stripped and flouted and thrown out of doors like a filthy rag by this poor old Howth, a man too child-hearted to kill a spider. It was pleasanter to hear him when he defended the great Past in which his ideal truth had been faintly shadowed. How he caught the salient tints of the feudal life! How the fine womanly nature of the man rose exulting in the free picturesque glow of the day of crusader and heroic deed! How he crowded in traits of perfected manhood in the conqueror, simple trust in the serf, to color [changed to: colour] and weaken his argument, not seeing that he weakened it! How, when he thought he had cornered the Doctor, he would color [changed to: colour] and laugh like a boy, then suddenly check himself, lest he might wound him! A curious laugh, genial, cheery,—bubbling out of his weak voice in a way that put you in mind of some old and rare wine. When he would check himself in one of these triumphant glows, he would turn to the Doctor with a deprecatory gravity, and for a few moments be almost submissive in his reply. So earnest and worn it looked then, the poor old face, in the dim light! The black clothes he wore were so threadbare and shining at the knees and elbows, the coarse leather shoes brought to so fine a polish! The Doctor idly wondered who had blacked them, glancing at Margaret's fingers.

There was a flower stuck in the button hole [changed to: button-hole] of the school master's [changed to: school-master’s] coat, a pale tea-rose. If Dr. Knowles had been a man of fine instincts, (which his opaque shining eyes would seem to deny,) he might have thought it was not unapt or ill-placed even in the shabby, scuffed coat. A scholar, a gentleman, though in patched shoes and trousers a world too short. Old and gaunt, hunger-bitten even it may be, with loose-jointed, bony limbs, and yellow face; clinging, loyal and brave, to the knightly honor, [deleted: to the knightly honor] to the quaint, delicate fancies of his youth, that were dust and ashes to other men. In the very haggard face you could find the quiet purity of the child he had been, and the old child's smile, fresh and credulous, on the mouth.

The Doctor had not spoken for a moment. It might be that he was careless of the poetic lights with which Mr. Howth tenderly decorated his old faith, or it might be that even he, with the terrible intentness of a real life-purpose in his brain, was touched by the picture of the far old chivalry, dead long ago. The master's voice grew low and lingering now. It was a labor [changed to: labour] of love, this. Oh, it is so easy to go back out of the broil of dust and meanness and barter into the clear shadow of that old life where love and bravery stand eternal verities,—never to be bought and sold in that dusty town yonder! To go back? To dream back, rather. To drag out of our own hearts, as the hungry old master did, whatever is truest and highest there, and clothe it with name and deed in the dim days of chivalry. Make a poem of it,—so much easier than to make a life!

Knowles shuffled uneasily, watching the girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Greal, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and happy,—why, this was life,—this death! But did pain, and martyrdom, and victory lie back in the days of Galahad and Arthur alone? The homely face grew stiller than before, looking out into the dun sweep of moorland,—cold, unrevealing. It baffled the man that looked at it. He shuffled, chewed tobacco vehemently, tilted his chair on two legs, broke out in a thunder-gust at last.

"Dead days for dead men! The world hears a bugle-call to-day more noble than any of your piping troubadours. We have something better to fight for than a vacant tomb."

The old man drew himself up haughtily.

"I know what you would say,—Liberty for the low and vile. It is a good word. That was a better which they hid in their hearts in the old time,—Honor [changed to: Honour]!"

Honor [changed to: Honour]! I think, Calvinist though he was, that word was his religion. Men have had worse. Perhaps the Doctor thought this; for he rose abruptly, and, leaning on the old man's chair, said, gently,—

"It is better, even here. Yet you poison this child's mind. You make her despise To-Day; make honor [changed to: honour] live for her now."

"It does not," the school master [changed to: school-master] said, bitterly. "The world's a failure. All the great old dreams are dead. Your own phantom, your Republic, your experiment to prove that all men are born free and equal.—what is it to-day?"

Knowles lifted his head, looking out into the brown twilight. Some word of pregnant meaning flashed in his eye and trembled on his lip; but he kept it back. His face glowed, though, and the glow and strength gave to the huge misshapen features a grand repose.

"You talk of To-Day," the old man continued, querulously. "I am tired of it. Here is its type and history," touching a county newspaper,—"a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehended fact. Bargain and sale,—it taints our religion, our brains, our flags, [changed to: flag?]—yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who were neither faithful to God nor rebellious, caring only for themselves?"

He paused, fairly out of breath. Margaret looked up. Knowles was silent. There was a smothered look of pain on the coarse face; the schoolmaster's words were sinking deeper than he knew.

Skilful Margaret! The broil must have been turbid in the old man's brain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could not calm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does some old song to quiet her pettish infant. His face brightened instantly.

"Do not believe, then, child," he said, after a pause. "It is a noble doubt in Dante or in you."

The Doctor had turned away; she could not see his face. The angry scorn was gone from the old master's countenance; it was bent with its usual wistful quiet [deleted: quiet; added: eagerness] on the floor. A moment after he looked up with a flickering smile.

"'Onorate l' altissimo poeta!'" he said, gently lifting his finger to his forehead in a military fashion.[14] "Where is my cane, Margaret? The Doctor and I will go and walk on the porch before it grows dark."

The sun had gone down long before, and the stars were out; but no one spoke of this. Knowles lighted the schoolmaster's pipe and his own cigar, and then moved the chairs out of their way, stepping softly that the old man might not hear him. Margaret, in the room, watched them as they went, seeing how gentle the rough, burly man was with her father, and how, every time they passed the sweet-brier, he bent the branches aside, that they might not touch his face. Slow, childish tears came into her eyes as she saw it; for the schoolmaster was blind. This had been their regular walk every evening, since it grew too cold for them to go down under the lindens. The Doctor had not missed a night since her father gave up the school, a month ago: at first, under pretence of attending to his eyes; but since the day he had told them there was no hope of cure, he had never spoken of it again. Only, since then, he had grown doubly quarrelsome,—standing ready armed to dispute with the old man every inch of every subject in earth or air, keeping the old man in a state of boyish excitement during the long, idle days, looking forward to this nightly battle.

It was very still; for the house, with its half-dozen acres, lay in an angle of the hills, looking out on the river, which shut out all distant noises. Only the men's footsteps broke the silence, passing and repassing the window. Without, the October starlight lay white and frosty on the moors, the old barn, the sharp, dark hills, and the river, which was half hidden by the orchard. One could hear it, like some huge giant moaning in his sleep, at times, and see broad patches of steel blue glittering through the thick apple-trees and the bushes. Her mother had fallen into a doze. Margaret looked at her, thinking how sallow the plump, fair face had grown, and how faded the kindly blue eyes were now. Dim with crying,—she knew that, though she never saw her shed a tear. Always cheery and quiet [deleted: and quiet], going placidly about the house in her gray dress and Quaker cap, as if there were no such things in the world as debt or blindness. But Margaret knew, though she said nothing. When her mother came in from those wonderful foraging expeditions in search of late pease [sic] or corn, she could see the swollen circle round the eyes, and hear her breath like that of a child which has sobbed itself tired. Then, one night, when she had gone late [deleted: late] into her mother's room, [added: after she was in bed] the blue eyes were set in a wild, hopeless way, as if staring down into years of starvation and misery. The fire on the hearth burned low and clear; the old worn furniture stood out cheerfully in the red glow, and threw a maze of twisted shadow on the floor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge.[15] This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty and bitter seemed her home and her life, that she thought the lonely dancer with her flaunting joy mocked her,—taunted them with the slow, gray desolation that had been creeping on them for years. Only for a moment the morbid fancy hurt her.

The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She chose to fancy the house as it had been once,—should be again, please God. She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty which the poor school master [changed to: school-master] had gathered about their home. Gone now. But it should return. It was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little of what had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures. Margaret and her father religiously believed them to be a Tintoret and Copley.[16] Well, they were gone now. He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said,—

"You can clean the pictures to-day, Margaret. Be careful, my child."

And Margaret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in her veins.

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,—something that should return. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margaret's, usually comes to pass.

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her quiet [deleted: quiet; added: every-day] purpose the trait of heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succor [changed to: succour] to the weak, life-long self-denial,—did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of the old aspirants for knighthood. She, too,—her quiet face stirred with a simple, childish smile, like her father's.

"Why, mother!" she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, "shall you sleep here all night?" laughing.

Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in a gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the door. Margaret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,—coming down, as every woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.

"Kittle's b'ilin'," he announced, flinging in the information as a general gratuity.

"That will do, Joel," said Mrs. Howth.

The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a shield between herself and "that class of people" was a study: a success, I think [deleted: I think]; the résumé of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life, like that of other American house keepers [changed to: house-keepers]. "Be gentle, but let them know their place, my dear!" The class having its type and exponent in Joel stopped at the door, and hitched up its suspenders.

"That will do, Joel," with a stern suavity.

Some idea was in Joel's head under the brush of red hair,—probably the "anarchic element."

"Uh was wishin' toh read the G'zette." Whereupon he advanced into the teeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before Margaret, as she went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a flaring tallow-candle on the table.

Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial minds find it: a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margaret, "in his opinion the crissis was jest at hand, and ev'ry man must be seein' ef the gover'ment was carryin' out the views of the people."

With which intent, Joel, in company with five thousand other sovereigns, consulted, as definitive oracle, "The Daily Gazette" of Towbridge. The school master [changed to: school-master] need not have grumbled for the old time: feudality [changed to: feudolity] in the days of Warwick and of "The Daily Gazette" was not so widely different as he and Joel thought.

Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged conviction, partly in compassion to the ignorance of women in political economics, he threw off to Margaret divers commentaries on the text, as she passed in and out. [Paragraph break added] If she had risen to the full level of Joel's views, she might have considered these views tinctured with radicalism, as they consisted in the propriety of the immediate "impinging of the President." Besides, (Joel was a good-natured man, too, merciful to his beast,) Nero-like, he wished, with the tiger drop of blood that lies hid in everybody's heart, that the few millions who differed with himself and the "Gazette" had but one neck for their more convenient hanging. "It's all that'll save the kentry," he said, and believed it, too.

If Margaret fell suddenly from the peak of out look [changed to: out-look] on life to the homely labor of cooking supper, some of the healthy heroic flush of the knightly days and the hearth-fire went down with her, I think. It brightened and reddened the square kitchen with its cracked stove and meagre array of tins; she bustled about in her quaint way, as if it had been filled up and running over with comforts. It brightened and reddened her face when she came in to put the last dish on the table,—a cozy [changed to: cosey], snug table, set for four. Heroic dreams with poets, I suppose, make them unfit for food other than some feast such as Eve set for the angel. But then Margaret was no poet. So, with the kindling of her hope, its healthful light struck out, and warmed and glorified these common things. Such common things! Only a coarse white cloth, redeemed by neither silver nor china, the amber coffee, (some that Knowles had brought out to her father,—"thrown on his hands; he couldn't use it,—product of slave-labor [changed to: labour]!--never, Sir!") the delicate brown fish that Joel had caught, the bread her mother had made, the golden butter.—all of them touched her nerves with a quick sense of beauty and pleasure. And more, the gaunt face of the blind old man, his bony hand trembling as he raised the cup to his lips, her mother and the Doctor managing silently to place everything he liked best near his plate. Wasn't it all part of the fresh, hopeful glow burning in her consciousness? It brightened and deepened. It blotted out the hard, dusty path of the future, and showed warm and clear the success at the end. Not much to show, you think. Only the old home as it once was, full of quiet laughter and content; only her mother's eyes clear shining again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labor of a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labor [changed to: labour] any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if this should banish, it might be, worse loss. She tried desperately, I say, to clutch the far, uncertain hope at the end, to make happiness out of it, to give it to her silent hungry [deleted: hungry; added: gnawing] heart to feed on. She thrust out of sight all possible life that might have called her true self into being, and clung to this present shallow duty and shallow reward. Pitiful and vain so to cling! It is the way of women. As if any human soul could bury that which might have been in that which is!

The Doctor, peering into her thought with sharp, suspicious eyes, heeded the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the pleasant cheery talk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew. The woman he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold. It was only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths of solitude her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy touched him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the kingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric shivers of laughter and tears,--terrible subtle [changed to: subtile] pain, or joy as terrible. Did he hold the power still, [changed to: still?] he wondered? [changed to: wondered.] Meanwhile she sat there quiet, [deleted: quiet] unread.

[added: Chapter Two]

The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapor [changed to: vapour] curdled into silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the stars,—in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like hoary-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to hear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the breath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like some human voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace on earth. This man's heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressive quiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world,—a dead torpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled his eyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore with stumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of the countless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm. He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day God first bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow.

He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study. The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonder that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic, nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool; their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The slow, [deleted: slow,] enduring air suited this woman, Margaret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow with sudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually: one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to the other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide should be his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was not his aim high, the highest? It was his right.

Margaret, looking up, saw the man's intolerant [deleted: intolerant] eye fixed on her. She met it coolly. All her short life, this strange man, so tender to the weak, had watched her with a sort of savage scorn, sneering at her apathy [deleted: her apathy], her childish, dreamy quiet [deleted: quiet; added: apathy], driving her from effort to effort with a scourge of impatient contempt. What did he want now with her? Her duty was light; she took it up,—she was glad to take it up; what more would he have? She put the whole matter away from her.

It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to her father, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came in half-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and listened, as he did everything else, intently. It was an old story that she read.—the story of a man who walked the fields and crowded streets of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago. Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without in the night grew deeper, that the slow-moving air stopped in its course to listen. Perhaps the simple story carried a deeper meaning to these brooding mountains and this [deleted: this] solemn sky than to the purblind hearts within. It was a dim, [deleted: dim,] far-off story to them,—very far off. The old school master [changed to: school-master] heard it with a lowered head, with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his leader's orders. Was not the leader a knight, the knight of truest courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man sprang up to own him Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate and drank with publicans and sinners, was a requirement of his mission; nowadays——. Joel heard the "good word" with a bewildered consciousness of certain rules of honesty to be observed the next day, and a maze of crowns and harps shining somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connection between the teachings of this book and "The Daily Gazette," it was pure blasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who [added: eighteen centuries ago] had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? [added: He doubted it.] People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was as unnatural and distorted as his body. God, looking down into his heart that night, saw the fierce earnestness of the man to know the truth, and judged him with other eyes than ours. [changed to: God, looking down into his heart that night, saw the savage wrestling there, and judged him with other eyes theirs.]

When the girl had finished reading, she went out and stood in the cool air. The Doctor passed her without notice. [deleted: previous two sentences] The story stood alive in his throbbing brain, demanding a hearing; it stood there always, needing but a touch to waken it. [deleted: it stood there always, needing but a touch to waken it] All things were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that his companions sneered at; most real of all the unhelped pain of life, the great seething mire of dumb wretchedness in our streets and alleys, the cry for aid from the starved souls of the world.[ Paragraph break deleted]

You and I have other work to do than to listen,—pleasanter. But this man [deleted: this man; added: he], coming out of the mire, his veins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up their pain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth to him,—more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. By the reality, the peril of the world's instant need, he tried the offered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night. Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had first doubted and tried [changed to: had doubted] him as this man did, their place [changed to: work] in the coming heaven might be higher,—and ours, who hear them.[ Paragraph break deleted]

He went, in his lumbering way, down the hill into the city. He was [deleted: He was] glad to go back [deleted: back]; the trustful, waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go back into [deleted: back into; added: to] the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens, its foul cellars. It is his place and work. If he stumble blindly against unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do you think their work is lost?

* * * * *

[End of October 1861 serial

PART II.

Margaret stood looking down in her quiet way [deleted: in her quiet way] at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending work [deleted: work; added: toil] lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness they held for her heart [deleted: they held for her heart], or coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the tense [deleted: tense; added: big] blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of fine pure [deleted: fine pure; added: untainted] blood,—gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of endurance,—measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work would be long [deleted: The work would be long; added: No short task], she knew [added: that]. She would be old before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised her of good.

[added:] All? Oh, Margaret, Margaret!

Was there no sullen doubt in the brave resolve? Was there no shadow rose [deleted: rose] just then, dark, ironical, blotting out father and mother and home, coming [deleted: coming; added: creeping] nearer, less alien to your soul than these, than even your God?

If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking drearily, [deleted: drearily,] vacantly, she remembered a time when [added: through that shadow, she believed more in a God] God came nearer to her [deleted: God came nearer to her] than He [deleted: He; added: she] did now; and came through that shadow,—[.] [deleted:, and came through that shadow,—] [W]hen, by the help of that [added: very] dead hope, He of whom she read to-night came [deleted: came; added: stood] close, an infinitely tender Helper, who [deleted: who,; added: that] with the [added: differing] human love that was in her heart to-day [deleted: love that was in her heart to-day; added: loves she knew], had loved his [changed to: His] mother and John and [deleted: John and] Mary. Now, struggle as she would for [added: warmth or] healthy hopes and warmth [deleted: and warmth], the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's nature called it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim ideal power, heaven far-off. She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost.

As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happened one of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, has nothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddy little terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with a suddenness strange in her slow movements. "Tiger!" she said, stroking its head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt her clothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he had seen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was a sound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches of some song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. It was a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margaret heard it through the dark; she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stood up, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, as it hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. She waited a moment, then pushed the dog [deleted: the dog; added: him] from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there were depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached. [paragraph break added here in]The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It was one of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to be a home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. It was piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on a broken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not help laughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such a make-shift look altogether.

[No paragraph break here]The reins were twisted rope, the wheels uneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if it would not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute just there in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of one eye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, as if to ask if you saw the joke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment, chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriest sounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity to salute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate.

"I'm late, Joel," said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's near at hand.

"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein’ honest," he responded, graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking out a jug of vinegar.

"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still, child.

Don't get down."

But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stood beside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled.

"I thought you would be down tonight [changed to: to-night]. I put some coffee on the stove. Bring it out, Joel."

Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of "the class,"—because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the social scale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even to herself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joel brought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited on Mrs. Howth.

"Barney will be jealous," he said, patting the bare ribs of the old donkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress.

"Give him his supper, surely," she said, taking the hint.

It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping and tasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over some rare Falernian.[17] You would be sure, from, just that little thing, that no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—with her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the pale [deleted: pale; added: livid] thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest poor,—the taint in her veins of black blood.

"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.

"How comed yoh with him, Lois?"

"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine,—you remember they allus was. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes,—been back for a month."

Margaret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped.

"Are you tired, father? It is late."

"And you are worn out, poor child! It was selfish in me to forget. Good-night, dear!"

Margaret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to his room-door. He lingered, holding her dress.

"Perhaps it will be easier for you tomorrow [changed to: to-morrow] than it was to-day?" hesitating.

"I am sure it will. To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day."

She left him, and went away with a slow step that did not echo the promise of her words.

Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress.

"Of course," she said, emphatically.—"You must stay until morning, Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft."

The queer little body hesitated.

"I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill to-night."

"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.

Her face brightened.

"Father's. He's back, mum."

Joel caught himself in a whistle.

"He's very stiddy, Joel,—as stiddy as yuh [changed to: yoh]."

"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth, gravely.

At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindly smile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois."

Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had a vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path, she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanations to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the furnace-rooms.

The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing broke the quiet and [deleted: the quiet and; added: solitary] cold of the night.

[Chapter III]

Even the [deleted: Even; added The] morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool,—the warm red dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray cloud. Margaret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?

Very slowly the night was driven back. An hour after, when she lifted her head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch, like sparks of brassy blue, and the sky [deleted: and the sky] and hills and valleys were one drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red film groped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get up, and live the rest of her life out;—what else had she to do?

Whatever this night had been to the girl, it left one thought sharp, alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of the trial of the day, when she would see him again. Was the old struggle of years before coming back? Was it all to go over again? She was worn out. She had been quiet in these—two years: what had gone before she never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even this stupid quiet. And now, when she had planned her life, busy and useful and contented, [changed to: busy, useful, contented,] why need God have sent the old thought to taunt her? A wild, sickening sense of what might have been struggled up: she thrust it down,—she had kept it down all night; the old pain should not come back,—it should not. She did not think of the love she had given up as a dream, as verse-makers or sham people do; she knew it to be the reality [deleted: reality; added: quick seed] of her life [deleted: life; added: soul]. She cried for it even now, with all the fierce strength of her nature; it was the best she knew; through it she came nearest to God. Thinking of the day when she had given it up, she remembered it with a vague consciousness of having fought a deadly struggle with her fate, and that she had been conquered,—never had lived again. Let it be; she could not bear the struggle again. [paragraph break added here]She went on dressing herself in a dreary, mechanical way. Once, a bitter laugh came on her face, as she looked into the glass, and saw the dead, dull eyes, and the wrinkle on her forehead. Was that the face to be crowned with delicate caresses and love? She scorned herself for the moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life as she was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depths of their nature have done the same,—saw themselves as others saw them: their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fitter subjects for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of many a slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as out of martyrdom, according to their faith: you see its marks sometimes in a frivolous old age going down with tawdry hopes and starved eyes to the grave; you see its victory in the freshest, fullest lives in the earth. This woman had accepted her trial, but she took it up as an inflexible fate which she did not understand; it was new to her; its solitude, its hopeless thirst were freshly bitter. She loathed herself as one whom God had thought unworthy of every woman's right,—to love and be loved.

She went to the window, looking blankly out into the gray cold. Any one with keen analytic eye, noting the thin muscles of this woman, the childish, scarlet lips, [deleted: the childish, scarlet lips; added: protruding brain], the eyes deep, concealing, would have foretold that she would conquer in the trial, that she would [deleted: trial, that she would; added: fight;] force her soul down,—but that the forcing down would leave the weak, flaccid body spent and dead. One thing was certain: no curious eyes would see the struggle; the body might be nerveless or sickly, but it had the great power of reticence; the calm with which she faced the closest gaze was natural to her,—no mask. When she left her room and went down, the same unaltered quiet that had baffled Knowles steadied her step and cooled her eyes.

After you have made a sacrifice of yourself for others, did you ever notice how apt you were to doubt, as soon as the deed was irrevocable, whether, after all, it were worth while to have done it? How poor [deleted: poor; added: mean] seems the good gained! How new and unimagined the agony of empty hands and stifled wish! Very slow the angels are, sometimes, that are sent to minister!

Margaret, going down the stairs that morning, found none of the chivalric unselfish glow of the night before in her home. It was an old, bare house in the midst of dreary moors [deleted: moors; added: stubble fields], in which her life was slowly to be worn out: [added: working for those who did not comprehend her; thanked her little,] that was all. It did not matter; life was short: she could thank God for that at least.

She opened the house-door. A draught of cold morning air struck her face, sweeping from the west; it had driven the fog in great gray banks upon the hills, or in shimmering broken [deleted: broken] swamps into the cleft hollows: a vague twilight filled the space left bare. Tiger, asleep in the hall, rushed out into the meadow, barking, wild with the freshness and cold, then back again to tear round her for a noisy good-morning. The touch of the dog seemed to bring her closer to his master; she put him away; she dared not suffer even that treachery to her purpose: because, in fact, [deleted: because, in fact,] the very circumstances that had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice to turn again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she had made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near to this man Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him,—stood in his way,— kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside, taken up her own solitary burden, and left him with his clear self-reliant life,—with his Self, dearer to him than she had ever been. Why should it not be [added: dearer]? she thought, —remembering the man as he was, a master among men, [deleted: . [added: : fit to be a master. She—what was she compared to him?] He was back again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistent dread running through her brain.

Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to Joel, —the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought as anything true and healthy would [deleted: would; added: should] have done. "Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, forgetting her own intolerable future for the moment, as she gathered up some breakfast and went with it down the lane. Morning had come; great heavy bars of light fell from behind the hills athwart the banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting, uneasy, obstinate tumult among the shadows; they did not mean to yield to the coming dawn. The hills, the massed woods, the mist opposed their immovable front, scornfully. Margaret did not notice the silent contest until she reached the lane. The girl Lois, sitting in her cart, was looking, quiet, [deleted: quiet,] attentive, at the slow surge of the shadows, and the slower lifting of the slanted rays.

Margaret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray and cold, as [deleted: as; added: like] her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart; some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the world, —some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margaret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors [changed to: colours] had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy [changed to: cosey] look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color [changed to: colour], Margaret noticed, wondering if it were accidental. Looking up, she saw the girl's brown eyes fixed on her face. They were singularly soft, brooding brown.

"Ye'r' goin' to th' mill, Miss Marg'et?" she asked, in a half whisper.

"Yes. You never go there now, Lois?"

"No, 'm."

The girl shuddered, and then tried to hide it in a laugh. Margaret walked on beside her, her hand on the cart's edge. Somehow this creature, that Nature had thrown impatiently aside as a failure, so marred, imperfect, that even the dogs were kind to her, came strangely near to her, claimed recognition by some subtile instinct.

Partly for this, and partly striving to forget herself, she glanced furtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wondering what impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that was looking out so intently through the brown eyes. What artist sense had she, —what could she know—the ignorant huckster—of the eternal laws of beauty or grandeur? Nothing. Yet something in the girl's face made her think that these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive to her, —real; that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, lay closer to Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of these earnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brown mould. It was an idle fancy; Margaret laughed at herself for it, and turned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed with such eager eyes.

The light was conquering, growing stronger [deleted: , growing stronger]. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wet vapor trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches of damp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiant victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in the cold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of the hills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepy river wakening under the mist, chorded in [deleted: in] with a grave bass to [deleted: to; added: in] the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, the world seemed to rejoice exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier sounds broke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margaret looked wearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balked life kept their meaning from her.

The light played on the heaped vegetables in the old cart; the bony legs of the donkey trotted on with fresh vigor [changed to: vigour]. There was not a lowing cow in the distant barns, nor a chirping swallow on the fence-bushes, that did not seem to include the eager face of the little huckster in their morning greetings. Not a golden dandelion on the road-side, not a gurgle of the plashing brown water from the well-troughs, which did not give a quicker pleasure to the glowing face. Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. What secret of recompense had this [deleted: this; added: the] poor wretch found?

"Your father is here, Lois," she said carelessly, to break the silence.

"I saw him at the mill yesterday."

Her face kindled instantly.

"He's home, Miss Marg'et,—yes. An' it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Sawney's ear.

Margaret smiled.

"Always? Who brings them right for you, Lois?"

"The Master," she said, turning with an answering smile.

Margaret was touched. The owner of the mill was not a more real verity to this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quiet knowledge.

"Are things right in the mill?" she said, testing her.

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if her weak brain were confused,—only for a moment.

"They'll come right!" she said, bravely. "The Master'll see to it!"

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to be surging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it was in a bewildered, doubtful way.

"It's a black place, th' mill," she said, in a low voice. "It was a good while I was there: frum seven year old till sixteen. 'T seemed longer t' me 'n 't was. 'T seemed as if I'd been there allus, —jes' forever, yoh know. 'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say: that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me,—made me different frum other folks."

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After a while she looked at Margaret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness.

[*]She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, nor the wistful look of the brown eyes that brightened into bravery after a while.

“It’ll come right,” she said, steadily, though her voice was lower than before.

"But the mill,"—Margaret recalled her.

"Th' mill,—yes. There was three of us,—father 'n' mother 'n' me,—'n' pay was poor. They said times was hard. They was hard times, Miss Marg'et!" she said, with a nervous laugh, the brown eyes strangely wandering.

"Yes, hard,"—she soothed her, gently.

"Pay was poor, 'n' many things tuk money." (Remembering the girl's mother, Margaret knew gin would have covered the "many things.") "Worst to me was th' mill. I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n' wool 'n' smells. [deleted: It 's better now there. I got stunted then, yoh know. 'N' th' air in th' alleys was worse, where we slep'. I think mebbe as 't was then I went wrong in my head. Miss Marg'et!"

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, listened half-attentive as the huckster maundered on.

”It was th’ mill,” she said at last. “I kind o’ grew into that place in them years: seemed to be like as I was part o’ th’ engines, somehow. Th’ air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi’ smoke ‘n’ wool ‘n’ smells.”]

"In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th' work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,—allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th' hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin' ,—creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was, —very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, out o’ sight, that’s so low [deleted: out o' sight, that's so low; added: though] they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to 't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"—

The girl was trembling now with excitement, her hands working together, [deleted: The girl was trembling now with excitement, her hands working together; added: The girl’s hands were working together] her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face, —through her marred senses.

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me, —special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poorhouse [changed to: poor-house]. So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margaret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped.[18] The ill of life was real enough to her,—a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens. Margaret listened, [deleted: waking; added: waked reluctantly] to the sense of a different pain in the world from her own,—lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

"Openin's to hell, they're like. People as come down to preach in them think that, 'pears to me,—'n' think we've but a little way to go, bein' born so near. It's easy to tell they thinks it,—shows in their looks. Miss Marg'et!" [deleted entire paragraph]

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that'd scorn to be cowardly or mean,—that shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or—such as me. Ther 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll come right,” she sobbed, [deleted:” she sobbed, “] “it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance—somewhere."

Margaret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against her from the ground? No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet—was she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she her brother's keeper?[19] It was true, there was wrong; this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help? She was free,—and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul's diseases, and——

Well, Lois was quiet now,—ready with her childish smile [deleted: with her childish smile] to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney's vices and virtues, or a description of [deleted: a description of] her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,—best in this town," she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the riverbank [changed to: river-bank], or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,—the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,—partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;—accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master."

This very drive, now, for instance,—although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing. Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margaret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,—something to do at every farmhouse:[ changed to: farm-house:] a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margaret noticed,—the pearly white balls close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday"; and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois." If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business," which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly."

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois. Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance. "This cart'll be right side up fur years to come," she would assert, shaking her head. "It's got no more notion o' givin' up than me nor Barney,—not a bit." Margaret had her doubts,—and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,—how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts,—scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,—russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,—plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,—peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart some artist [deleted: some artist; added: somebody] would paint me Lois and her cart! Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,—and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colorer [changed to: colourer] for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great papaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had some of the schoolmaster's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were papaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and beans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"—for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"—a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare, wretched life,—a faith, faith in God, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes,—something which scorned to betray the trust,—some Christ-like power [added: in their souls], smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. Not [deleted: Not; added: A something in them never to be] lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was not weak to warm or [deleted: not weak to warm or; added: wholesome] to strengthen. Margaret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone; she was keenly alive; the homely [deleted: homely; added: coarse] real life of this huckster had [deleted: had] fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death.[20] How actual it was to-day,—hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it,—God, the good!

[Chapter IV]

She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surly nod.

"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen cocked her one eye up at him.

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes,—he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the quiet, [deleted: quiet,] cold face bending over the desk, meantime.

Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip.

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

"Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'"[21]

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now, attentive [deleted: , attentive].

"He came here to take my place in the mills,—buy me out,—articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,—no,—not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he's sold them at a high figure,—threw his heart in,—the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,—starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady,—my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

Nothing could be read on the cold still [deleted: cold still] face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—worse than Orleans slaves. Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"O-f course. Only child of Herne's. He comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that—

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,—a clergyman, [added: Vandyke;] whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said the clergyman [deleted: the clergyman; added: Vandyke], half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"—with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waist coat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,—after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the quiet [deleted: quiet; added: attentive] face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing." [Paragraph break added] Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together, —they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can produce. It's facts, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, are the basis of every sound speculation.'"[22]

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that nailed the parson."

The parson nodded gravely.

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to his reverend friend.

"One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia.[23] A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honor,[ changed to: honour,] rise according to the stuff that's in them,—pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained," spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to fire-water and 'itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the wool-man. "No, it's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, and glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep,—"a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats and sauntered away into the street.

So the day [changed to: The day] broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old schoolmaster [changed to: school-master] in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the "Sirventes de Bertrand de Born." The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again. [deleted: The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again.] Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,—pondering gravely (being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette"; wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon his political opponents [deleted: his political opponents; added: slaveholders], praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,—well,—hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the High-Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium, were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time.[24] One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's prayer [deleted: prayer; added: petition] for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side. Let us hope, that, [deleted: Let us hope, that,; added: Perhaps,] even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity.

Margaret, through the heat and [deleted: heat and] stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely [deleted: the cold, homely; added: her] face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound came between,— a slow, quiet [deleted: a slow, quiet; added: an iron] tread, passing through the long wooden corridor,—so firm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of a clock. She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it came slowly nearer, up to the door without,—passed it, going down the echoing plank walk. The girl sat quietly, looking out at the dead brick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a step she heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off all outward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with a terrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soul looked out from her face, [deleted: her face] her soul as it was, as God knew it,—God and this man. No longer a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his [deleted: power; added: grasp] went on carelessly, not knowing that the mere sound of his step had raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain, were nothing to him now, she remembered, staring out at the taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was the sudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy step crush her life out,—as he would have done, she thought, choking down the icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose, though it cost his own heart’s life to do it. He would trample her down, if she kept him back from his end; but be false to her, false to himself, that he would never be!

So the hot, long day wore on,—the [deleted: So the hot, long day wore on,—the; added: The] red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable chicken peering out, [deleted: growing; added: grew] sharper and more real in the glare [deleted: in the glare]. Life was no morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it actual and [deleted: actual and] near [added: , cruel]. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb hunger [deleted: hunger; added: question] in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help to do something to save others with this poor life left in her hands.

So the hot [deleted: hot] day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring down like some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or shams,—baking the hard earth in the streets harder for the horses' feet, drying up the bits of grass that grew between the boulders of the gutter, scaling off the paint from the brazen faces of the interminable brick houses. He looked down in that city as in every American town, as in these where you and I live, on the same countless maze of human faces going day by day through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passing through the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strange meanings by this common light of the sun,—meanings such as you and I might read, if our eyes were clear as his,—or morbid, it may be. [deleted: .; added: , you think?] A commonplace crowd like this in the street without: women with cold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained, bilious men, dapper 'prentices, draymen, prize-fighters, negroes. Knowles looked about him as into a seething caldron, in which the people I tell you of were atoms, where the blood of uncounted races was fused, but not mingled,—where creeds, philosophies, centuries old, grappled hand to hand in their death-struggle,—where innumerable aims and beliefs and powers of intellect, smothered rights and triumphant wrongs, warred together, struggling for victory.

Vulgar American life? He thought it a life more potent, more tragic in its history and prophecy, than any that has gone before. People called him a fanatic. It may be that he was one: yet the uncouth old man, sick in soul from some gnawing [deleted: gnawing] pain of [deleted: of; added: that I dare not tell you of, in] his own life, looked into the depths of human loss with a mad desire to set it right. On the very faces of those who sneered at him he found some traces of failure or pain [deleted: or pain], something that his heart carried up to God with a loud and exceeding bitter cry. The voice of the world, he thought, went up to heaven a discord, unintelligible, hopeless,—the great blind world, astray since the first ages! Was there no hope, no help?

The hot [deleted: hot] sun shone down, as it had done for six thousand years; it shone on open problems in the lives of these men and women [added: , these dogs and horses] who walked the streets, problems whose end and beginning no eye could read. There were places where it did not shine: down in the fetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the prison yonder: what riddles of human [deleted: human] life lay there he dared not think of. God knows how the man groped for the light,—for any voice to make earth and heaven clear to him.

So the hot, long day wore on, for all of them. [deleted: So the hot, long day wore on, for all of them.] There was another light by which the world was seen that day, rarer than the sunshine, purer. It fell on the dense crowds,—upon the just and the unjust. It went into the fogs of the fetid dens from which the coarser light was barred, into the deepest mires [added: of body] where a human [deleted: human] soul could wallow, and made them clear. It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and passion men were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kindly [changed to: kind] thought, no pure desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere could be so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search it out, glow about it, shine through [deleted: through; added: under] it, hold it up in full view of God and the angels,—lighting the world other than the sun had done for six thousand years. We [deleted: We; added: I] have no name for the light: it has a name,—yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see its shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.

Yet poor [deleted: poor] Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its heavenly clearness. I think it was this light that made the burning of Christmas fires warmer for her than for others, that showed her all the love and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic which her eyes saw perpetually in the old warm-hearted world. That evening, as she sat on the step of her brown [deleted: brown] frame shanty, knitting at a great blue stocking, her scarred face and misshapen body very pitiful to the passers-by, it was this light [deleted: light] that gave to her face its homely, cheery smile. It made her eyes quick to know the message in the depths of color [changed to: colour] in the evening sky, or even the flickering tints of the green creeper on the wall with its crimson cornucopias filled with hot sunshine [deleted: sunshine; added: shining]. She liked clear, vital colors, [changed to: colours,] this girl,—the crimsons and blues. They answered her, somehow. They could speak. There were things in the world that like herself were marred,—did not understand,—were hungry to know: the gray sky, the mud swamps, the tawny lichens. She cried sometimes, looking at them, hardly knowing why: she could not help it, with a vague sense of loss. It seemed at those times so dreary for them to be alive,—or for her. Other things her eyes were quicker to see than ours: delicate or grand lines, which she perpetually sought for unconsciously,—in the homeliest things, the very soft curling of the woollen yarn in her fingers, as in the eternal sculpture of the mountains. Was it the disease of her injured brain that made all things alive to her,—that made her watch, in her ignorant way, the grave hills, the flashing, victorious rivers, look pitifully into the face of some [added: starved hound or] dingy mushroom trodden in the mud before it scarce had lived, just as we should look into human faces to know what they would say to us? Was it the [deleted: the] weakness and ignorance that made everything she saw or touched nearer, more human to her than to you or me? She never got used to living as other people do; these sights and sounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, weak and tired.

She had no self-poised artist sense, this Lois,—knew nothing of Nature's laws [added: , as you do]. Yet sometimes, watching the dun sea of the prairie rise and fall in the crimson light of early morning, or, in the farms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with the life of bird and forest, she forgot the poor coarse [deleted: coarse; added: vile] thing she was, some coarse weight fell off, and something within, not the sickly Lois of [deleted: the town] [the mill], went out, free, like an exile dreaming of home.

You tell me, that, doubtless, in the wreck of the creature's brain, there were fragments of some artistic insight that made her thus rise above the level of her daily life, drunk with the mere beauty of form and color [changed to: colour]. I do not know,—not knowing how sham or real a thing you mean by artistic insight. But I do know that the clear light I told you of shone for this girl dimly through this beauty of form and color; [changed to: form and colour; alive. The Life, rather;] and ignorant, with no words for her thoughts, she believed in it as the Highest that she knew. I think it came to her thus an imperfect language, (not an outward show of tints and lines, as to some [deleted: some] artists,)—a language, the same that Moses heard when he stood alone, with nothing between his naked soul and God, but the desert and the mountain and the bush that burned with fire. I think the weak soul of the girl staggered from its dungeon, and groped through these heavy-browed hills, these color-dreams, [changed to: colour-dreams,] through even [deleted: even] the homely, kind [deleted: homely, kind] faces on [deleted: on; added: of dog or man upon] the street, to find the God that lay behind. So the light showed her [deleted: the light showed her; added: she saw] the world, and, making [deleted: making] its beauty and warmth [added: being] divine and [deleted: and; added: as] near to her, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homely shadows [deleted: shadows; added: reflection] in her daily life. So it showed her [deleted: it showed her; added: she knew], too, through her vague chaildish knowledge, [deleted: through her vague childish knowledge,] the Master in whom she believed,—showed [deleted:—showed; added: saw] Him to her [deleted: to her] in everything that lived, more real than all beside. The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the coarsest or fairest atom that she touched was [deleted: coarsest or fairest atom that she touched was; added: very worm in the gutter was] but a part of Him, [deleted: Him,; added: this man] something sent [deleted: sent; added: come] to tell [added: her] of Him,—she dimly felt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought. Yet even more real than this. There was no pain nor temptation down in those dark cellars where she went that He had not borne,—not one. Nor was there the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerful fire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know He sent it and was glad to do it. She knew that well! So it was that He took part in her humble daily life, and became more real to her day by day. Very homely shadows her life gave of His light, for it was His: homely, because of her poor way of living, and of the depth to which the heavy foot of the world had crushed her. Yet they were there all the time, in her cheery patience, if nothing more. To-night, for instance, how differently the surging crowd seemed to her from what it did to Knowles! She looked down on it from her high wood-steps with an eager interest, ready with her weak, timid laugh to answer every friendly call from below. She had no power to see them as types of great classes; they were just so many living people, whom she knew, and who, most of them, had been kind to her. Whatever good there was in the vilest face, (and there was always something,) she was sure to see it. The light made her poor eyes strong for that.

She liked to sit there in the evenings, being alone, yet never growing lonesome; there was so much that was pleasant to watch and listen to, as the cool brown twilight came on. If, as Knowles thought, the world was a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it. People were going from their work now,—they had time to talk and joke by the way,—stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street. From the houses near you could catch a faint smell of supper: very friendly people those were in these houses; she knew them all well. The children came out with their faces washed, to play, now the sun was down: the oldest of them generally came to sit with her and hear a story.

After it grew darker, you would see the girls in their neat blue calicoes go sauntering down the street with their sweethearts for a walk. There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from the coal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on their caps. After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, coziest [deleted: coziest; added: coseyest] old couple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from the country, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any to Jenny but "old man" and pinks,) and she always had them ready in broken jugs inside. They were good, kind girls, every one of them,—had taken it in turn to sit up with Lois last winter all the time she had the rheumatism. She never forgot that time,—never once.

Later in the evening you would see an old [deleted: an old; added: a] man coming along, close by the wall, with his head down, [added: the very same Margret had seen in the mill,]—a very dark man, with gray, thin hair, — Joe Yare, Lois's old father. No one spoke to him,—people always were looking away as he passed; and if old Mr. or Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, "Good-evening, Mr. Yare," very formally, and go away presently. It hurt Lois more than anything else they could have done. But she bustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it. If they saw the marks of the ill life he had lived on his old face, she did not; his sad, uncertain eyes may have been dishonest to them, but they were nothing but kind to the misshapen little soul that he kissed so warmly with a "Why, Lo, my little girl!" Nobody else in the world ever called her by a pet name.<?p>

Sometimes he was gloomy and silent, but generally he told her of all that had happened in the mill, particularly any little word of notice or praise he might have received, watching her anxiously until she laughed at it, and then rubbing his hands cheerfully. He need not have doubted Lois's faith in him. Whatever the rest did, she believed in him; she always had believed in him, through all the dark, [deleted: dark,] dark years, when he was at home, and in the penitentiary. They were gone now, never to come back. It had come right. She, at least, thought his repentance sincere. [deleted: She, at least, thought his repentance sincere.] If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that they did, that would come right some day too, she would think, as she looked at the tired, sullen face of the old man bent to the window-pane, afraid to go out. But they [deleted But they; added: They

Sometimes, late at night, when he had gone to bed, she sat alone in the door, while the moonlight fell in broad patches over the quiet square, and the great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the far sounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up her knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of the poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral in the city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far off into the blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, the warm, bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were, seemed to fade into the deep music, and make a part of it.

Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poor child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. It made her meanness, her low, weak life so real [deleted: real; added: plain] to her! There was no pain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in its inarticulate [deleted: inarticulate; added: articulate] cry. She! what was she? All the [deleted: All the; added: The] pain and wants of the world must be going up to God in that sound, she thought. There was something more in it,—an unknown meaning [added: of a great content] that her shattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart ached with a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague, insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant and low, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking. She thought the unknown meaning [deleted: the unknown meaning; added: that unknown Joy] linked all earth and heaven together, and made it plain. So she hid her face in her hands, and listened while the low harmony shivered through the air, unheeded by others, with the message of God to man. Not comprehending, it may be,—the poor girl,—hungry still to know. Yet, when she looked up, there were warm tears in her eyes, and her scarred face was bright with a sad, deep content and love.

So the hot, long day was over for them all,—passed as thousands of days have done for us, gone down, forgotten: as that long, hot day we call life will be over some time, and go down into the gray and cold. Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that day for you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seen glimpses of that other light than sunshine: the light of the great Tomorrow [changed to: To-morrow], of the land where all wrongs shall be righted. If we had but chosen to see it,—if we only had chosen![ end of November 1861 serial]

PART III. [deleted: PART III.; added: Chapter V

Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have been painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all my heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,—the time which Dr. Johnson sat up all night to read about in "Evelina,"—the time when all the celestial virtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer.[25] None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then! It made your hair stand on end only to read of them,—dyed at their birth clear through with Pluto’s blackest poison, [deleted: dyed at their birth clear through with Pluto's blackest poison,] going about perpetually seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour. That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then in seeing which were sheep and which were goats! A person could write a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope! People that were born in those days had no fancy for going through the world with half-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so Nature turned out complete specimens of each class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, et cetera, chording decently. At least, so those veracious histories say, [deleted: At least, so those veracious histories say.] The heroine, for instance, [deleted: , for instance,] glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of matrimony;—all the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed insurgents planning revolts in caves.

Of course, I do not mean that these times are gone: they are alive (in a modern fashion) in many places in the world; some of my friends have described them in prose and verse. I only mean to say that I never was there; I was born unlucky. I am willing to do my best, but I live in the commonplace. Once or twice I have rashly tried my hand at dark conspiracies, and women rare and radiant in Italian bowers; but I have a friend who is sure to say, "Try and tell us about the butcher next door, my dear." If I look up from my paper now, I shall be just as apt to see our dog and his kennel as the white sky stained with blood and Tyrian purple. I never saw a full-blooded saint or sinner in my life. The coldest villain I ever knew was the only son of his mother, and she a widow,—and a kinder son never lived. I have known [deleted: I have known; added: Doubtless there are] people capable of a love terrible in its strength; but I never knew such a case that some one did not consider its expediency as "a match" in the light of dollars and cents. As for heroines, of course I know [deleted: know; added: have seen] beautiful women, and good as fair. The most beautiful is delicate and pure enough for a type of the Madonna, and has a heart almost as warm and holy as hers who was blessed among woman [deleted: as hers who was blessed among women]. (Very pure blood is in her veins, too, if you care about blood.) But at home they call her Tode for a nickname; all we can do, she will sing, and sing through her nose; and on washing-days she often cooks the dinner, and scolds wholesomely, if the tea-napkins are not in order. Now, what is anybody to do with a heroine like that? I have known old maids in abundance, with pathos and sunshine in their lives; but the old maid of novels I never have met, who abandoned her soul to gossip,—nor yet the other type, a lifelong [changed to: life-long] martyr of unselfishness. They are mixed generally, and are [deleted: are] not unlike their married sisters, so far as I can see. Then as to men, certainly I know heroes. One man, I knew, as high a chevalier in heart as any Bayard of them all; one of those souls simple and gentle as a woman, tender in knightly honor [changed to: honour].[26] He was an old man, with a rusty brown coat and rustier wig, who spent his life in a dingy village office. You poets would have laughed at him. Well, well, his history never will be written. The kind, sad, blue eyes are shut now. There is a little farm-graveyard overgrown with privet and wild grape-vines, and a flattened grave where he was laid to rest; and only a few who knew him when they were children care to go there, and think of what he was to them. But it was not in the far days of Chivalry alone, I think, that true and tender [deleted: tender; added: proud] souls have stood in the world unwelcome, and, hurt to the quick, have turned away and dumbly died. Let it be. Their lives are not lost, thank God!

I meant only to ask you, How can I help it, if the people in my story seem coarse to you,—if the hero, unlike all other heroes, stopped to count the cost before he fell in love,—if it made his fingers thrill with pleasure to touch a full pocket-book as well as his mistress's hand,—not being withal, this Stephen Holmes, a man to be despised? A hero, rather, of a peculiar type,—a man, more than other men: the very mould of man, doubt it who will, that women love longest and most madly. Of course, if I could, I would have blotted out every meanness or flaw before I showed him to you; I would have given [deleted: given; added: told] you Margaret [added: was] an impetuous, whole-souled woman, glad to throw her life down for her father without one bitter thought of the wife and mother she might have been; I would have painted her mother tender as she was [ changed to: (as she was,)] forgetting how pettish she grew on busy days: but what can I do? I must show you men and women as they are in that especial State of the Union where I live. In all the others, of course, it is very different. Now, being prepared for disappointment, will you see my hero?

He had sauntered out from the city for a morning walk,—not through the hills, as Margaret went, going home, but on the other side, to the river, over which you could see the Prairie. We are in Indiana, remember. The sunlight was pure that morning, powerful, tintless, the true wine of life for body or spirit. Stephen Holmes knew that, being a man of delicate animal instincts, and so used it, just as he had used the dumb-bells in the morning. All things were made for man, weren't they? He was leaning against the door of the school-house,—a red, flaunting house, the daub on the landscape: but, having his back to it, he could not see it, so through his half-shut eyes he suffered the beauty of the scene to act on him. Suffered: in a man, according to his creed, the will being dominant, and all influences, such as beauty, pain, religion, permitted to act under orders. Of course.

It was a peculiar landscape,—like the man who looked at it, of a thoroughly American type. A range of sharp, dark hills, with a sombre depth of green shadow in the clefts, and on the sides massed forests of scarlet and flame and crimson. Above, the sharp peaks of stone rose into the wan blue, wan and pale themselves, and wearing a certain air of fixed calm, the type of an eternal quiet. At the base of the hills lay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its far edge flowed the Wabash,—deep here, tinted with green, writhing and gurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen and mud-covered rock. Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West,—the Prairies. Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west. A plain dark russet in hue,—for the grass was sun-scorched,—stretching away into the vague distance, intolerable, silent, broken by hillocks and puny streams that only made the vastness and silence more wide and heavy. Its limitless torpor weighed on the brain; the eyes ached, stretching to find some break before the dull russet faded into the amber of the horizon and was lost. An American landscape: of few features, simple, grand in outline as a face of one of the early gods. It lay utterly motionless before him, not a fleck of cloud in the pure blue above, even where the mist rose from the river; it only had glorified the clear blue into clearer violet.

Holmes stood quietly looking; he could have created a picture like this, if he never had seen one; therefore he was able to recognize it, accepted it into his soul, and let it do what it would there. [paragraph break added here]Suddenly a low wind from the far Pacific coast struck from the amber line where the sun went down. A faint tremble passed over the great hills, the broad sweeps of color [changed to: colour] darkened from base to summit, then flashed again,--while below, the prairie rose and fell like a dun sea, and rolled in long, slow, solemn waves.

The wind struck so broad and fiercely in Holmes's face that he caught his breath. It was a savage freedom, he thought, in the West there, whose breath blew on him,—the freedom of the primitive man, the untamed animal man, self-reliant and self-assertant, having conquered Nature. Well, this fierce masterful freedom was good for the soul, sometimes, doubtless. It was old Knowles's vital air. He wondered if the old man would succeed in his hobby, if he could make the slavish beggars and thieves in the alleys yonder comprehend this fierce freedom. They craved leave to live on sufferance now, not knowing their possible divinity. It was a desperate remedy, this sense of unchecked liberty; but their disease was desperate. As for himself, he did not need it; that element was not lacking. In a mere bodily sense, to be sure. He felt his arm. Yes, the cold rigor of this new life had already worn off much of the clogging weight of flesh, strengthened the muscles. Six months more in the West would toughen the fibres to iron. He raised an iron weight that lay on the steps, carelessly testing them. For the rest, he was going back here; something of the cold, loose freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years of absence his power of concentration had been stronger, his perceptions more free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate point, acuteness of analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy air, coarse with the wild perfume of the prairie. No, his temperament needed a subtiler atmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom. The East, the Old World, was his proper sphere for self-development. He would go as soon as he could command the means, leaving all clogs behind. All? His idle thought balked here, suddenly; the sallow forehead contracted sharply, and his gray eyes grew in an instant shallow, careless, formal, as a man who holds back his thought. There was a fierce warring in his brain for a moment. Then he brushed his Kossuth hat with his arm, and put it on, looking out at the landscape again. Somehow its meaning was dulled to him. Just then a muddy terrier came up, and rubbed itself against his knee. "Why, Tige, old boy!" he said, stooping to pat it kindly. The hard, shallow look faded out, and he half smiled, looking in the dog's eyes. A curious smile, unspeakably tender and sad. It was the idiosyncrasy of the man's face, rarely seen there. He might have looked with it at a criminal, condemning him to death. But he would have condemned him, and, if no hangman could be found, would have put the rope on with his own hands, and then most probably would have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his sensations on paper,—being sincere in all.

He sat down on the school-house step, which the boys had hacked and whittled rough, and waited; for he was there by appointment, to meet Dr. Knowles.

Knowles had gone out early in the morning to look at the ground he was going to buy for his Phalanstery, or whatever he chose to call it. He was to bring the deed of sale of the mill out with him for Holmes. The next day it was to be signed. Holmes saw him at last lumbering across the prairie, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Summer or winter, he contrived to be always hot. There was a cart drawn by an old donkey coming along beside him. Knowles was talking to the driver. The old man clapped his hands as stage-coachmen do, and drew in long draughts of air, as if there were keen life and promise in every breath. They came up at last, the cart empty, and drying for the day's work after its morning's scrubbing, Lois's pock-marked face all in a glow with trying to keep Barney awake. She grew quite red with pleasure at seeing Holmes, but went on quickly as the men began to talk. Tige followed her, of course; but when she had gone a little way across the prairie, they saw her stop, and presently the dog came back with something in his mouth, which he laid down beside his master, and bolted off. It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filled with damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded green with a few crimson tints. It had a clear woody smell, like far-off myrrh. The Doctor laughed as Holmes took it up.

"An artist's gift, if it is from a mulatto," he said. "A born colorist [changed to: colourist]."

The men were not at ease, for some reason; they seized on every trifle to keep off the subject which had brought them together.

"That girl's artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under the perversion and ignorance of her brain. Curious, eh?"

"Look at the top of her head, when you see her," said Holmes. "It is necessity for such brains to worship. They let the fire lick their blood, if they happen to be born Parsees. This girl, if she had been a Jew when Christ was born, would have known him as Simeon did."

Knowles said nothing,—only glanced at the massive head of the speaker, with its overhanging brow, square development at the sides, and lowered crown, and smiled significantly.

"Exactly," laughed Holmes, putting his hand on his head. "Crippled there by my Yorkshire blood,—my mother. Never mind; outside of this life, blood or circumstance matters nothing."

They walked on slowly towards town. Surely there was nothing in the bill-of-sale which the old man had in his pocket but a mere matter of business; yet they were strangely silent about it, as if it brought shame to some one. There was an embarrassed pause. The Doctor went back to Lois for relief.

"I think it is the pain and want of such as she that makes them susceptible to religion. The self in them is so starved and humbled that it cannot obscure their eyes; they see God clearly."

"Say rather," said Holmes, "that the soul is so starved and blind that it cannot recognize itself as God."

The Doctor's intolerant eye kindled.

"Humph! So that's your creed! Not Pantheism. Ego sum. Of course you go on with the conjugation: I have been, I shall be. I,—that covers the whole ground, creation, redemption, and commands the hereafter?"[27]

"It does so," said Holmes, coolly.

"And this wretched huckster carries her deity about her,—her self-existent soul? How, in God's name, is her life to set it free?"

Holmes said nothing. The coarse sneer could not be answered. Men with pale faces and heavy jaws like his do not carry their religion on their tongue's end; their creeds leave them only in the slow oozing life-blood, false as the creeds may be.

Knowles went on hotly, half to himself, seizing on the new idea fiercely, as men and women do who are yet groping for the truth of life.

"What is it your Novalis says? 'The true Shechinah is man.'[29] You know no higher God? Pooh! the idea is old enough; it began with Eve. It works slowly, Holmes. In six thousand years, taking humanity as one, this self-existent soul should have clothed itself with a freer, royaller garment than poor Lois's body,—or mine," he added, bitterly.

"It works slowly," said the other, quietly. "Faster soon, in America. There are yet many ills of life for the divinity within to conquer."

"And Lois and the swarming mass yonder in those dens? It is late for them to begin the fight?"

"Endurance is enough for them here. Their [changed to: here, and their] religions teach them that they could not bear the truth. One does not put a weapon into the hands of a man dying of the fetor and hunger of the siege."

"But what will this life, or the lives to come, give to you champions who know the truth?"

"Nothing but victory," he said, in a low tone, looking away.

Knowles looked at the pale strength of the iron face.

"God help you, Stephen!" he broke out, his shallow jeering falling off. "For there is a God higher than we. The ills of life you mean to conquer will teach it to you, Holmes. You'll find the Something above yourself, if it's only to curse Him and die."

Holmes did not smile at the old man's heat,—walked gravely, steadily.

There was a short silence. The old man [deleted: The old man; added: Knowles] put his hand gently on the other's arm.

"Stephen," he hesitated, "you're a stronger man than I. I know what you are; I've watched you from a boy. But you're wrong here. I'm an old man. There's not much I know in life,—enough to madden me. But I do know there's something stronger,—some God outside of the mean devil they call 'Me.' You'll learn it, boy. There's an old story of a man like you and the rest of your sect, and of the vile, mean, crawling things that God sent to bring him down. There are such things yet. Mean passions in your divine soul, low, selfish things, that will get the better of you, show you what you are. You'll do all that man can do. But they are coming, Stephen Holmes! they're coming!"

He stopped, startled. For Holmes had turned abruptly, glancing over at the city with a strange wistfulness. It was over in a moment. He resumed the slow, controlling walk beside him. They went on in silence into town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, not referring to the last. The Doctor's heat, as it usually did, boiled out in spasms on trifles. Once he stumped his toe, and, I am sorry to say, swore roundly about it, just as he would have done in the new Arcadia, if one of the jail-birds comprising that colony had been ungrateful for his advantages. Philanthropists, for some curious reason, are not the most amiable members of small families.

He gave Holmes the roll of parchment he had in his pocket, looking keenly at him, as he did so, but only saying, that, if he meant to sign it, it would be done to-morrow. As Holmes took it, they stopped at the great door of the factory. He went in alone, Knowles going down the street. One trifle, strange in its way, he remembered afterwards. Holding the roll of paper in his hand that would make the mill his, he went, in his slow, grave way, down the long passage to the loom-rooms. There was a crowd of porters and firemen there, as usual, and he thought one of them hastily passed him in the dark passage, hiding behind an engine. As the shadow fell on him, his teeth chattered with a chilly shudder. He smiled, thinking how superstitious people would say that some one trod on his grave just then, or that Death looked at him, and went on. Afterwards he thought of it. Going through the office, the fat old book-keeper, Huff, stopped him with a story he had been keeping for him all day. He liked to tell a story to Holmes; he could see into a joke; it did a man good to hear a fellow laugh like that. Holmes did laugh, for the story was a good one, and stood a moment, then went in, leaving the old fellow chuckling over his desk. Huff did not know how, lately, after every laugh, this man felt a vague scorn of himself, as if jokes and laughter belonged to a self that ought to have been dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it, he would have said that the man was better than he knew. But then,--poor Huff! He passed slowly through the long [deleted: long] alleys between the great looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze of iron cylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in swift, ponderous motion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, and the hot daylight glaring over all. The looms were watched by women, most of them bold, tawdry girls of fifteen or sixteen, or lean-jawed women from the hills, wives of the coal-diggers. There was a breathless odor [changed to: odour] of copperas. As he went from one room to another up through the ascending stories, he had a vague sensation of being followed. Some shadow lurked at times behind the engines, or stole after him in the dark entries. Were there ghosts, then, in mills in broad daylight? None but the ghosts of Want and Hunger and Crime, he might have known, that do not wait for night to walk our streets: the ghosts that poor old Knowles hoped to lay forever.[29]

Holmes had a room fitted up in the mill, where he slept. He went up to it slowly, holding the paper tightly in one hand, glancing at the operatives, the work, through his furtive half-shut eye. Nothing escaped him. Passing the windows, he did not once look out at the prophetic dream of beauty he had left without. In the mill he was of the mill. Yet he went slowly, as if he shrank from the task waiting for him. Why should he? It was a simple matter of business, this transfer of Knowles's share in the mill to himself; to-day he was to decide whether he would conclude the bargain. If any dark history of wrong lay underneath, if this simple decision of his was to be the struggle for life and death with him, his cold, firm face told nothing of it. Let us be just to him, stand by him, if we can, in the midst of his desolate home and desolate life, and look through his cold, sorrowful eyes at the deed he was going to do. Dreary enough he looked, going through the great mill, despite the power in his quiet face. A man who had strength to be alone [deleted: to be alone; added: for solitude]; yet, I think, with all his strength and power [deleted: and power], his mother could not have borne to look back from the dead that day, to see her boy so utterly alone. The day was the crisis of his life, looked forward to for years; he held in his hand a sure passport to fortune. Yet he thrust the hour off, perversely, trifling with idle fancies, pushing from him the one question which all the years past and to come had left for this day to decide.

Some such idle fancy it may have been that made the man turn from the usual way down a narrow passage into which opened doors from small offices. Margaret Howth, he had learned to-day, was in the first one. He hesitated before he did it, his sallow face turning a trifle paler; then he went on in his hard, grave way, wondering dimly if she remembered his step, if she cared to see him now. She used to know it,—she was the only one in the world who ever had cared to know it,—silly child! Doubtless she was wiser now. He remembered he used to think, that, when this woman loved, it would be as he himself would love [deleted: love], with a simple trust which the wrong of years could not touch. And once he had thought—Well, well, he was mistaken. Poor Margaret! Better as it was. They were nothing to each other. She had put him from her, and he had suffered himself to be put away. Why, he would have given up every prospect of life, if he had done otherwise! Yet he wondered bitterly if she had thought him selfish,—if she thought it was money he cared for, as the others did. It mattered nothing what they thought, but it wounded him intolerably that she should wrong him. Yet, with all this, whenever he looked forward to death, it was with the certainty that he should find her there beyond. There would be no secrets then; she would know then how he had loved her always. Loved her? Yes; he need not hide it from himself, surely.

He was now by the door of the office;—she was within. Little Margaret, poor little Margaret! struggling there day after day for the old father and mother. What a pale, cold little child she used to be! such a child! yet kindling at his look or touch, as if her veins were filled with subtile flame. Her soul was like his own, he thought. He knew what it was,—he only. Even now he glowed with a man's triumph to know he held the secret life of this woman bare in his hand. No other human power could ever come near her; he was secure in possession. She had put him from her,—it was better for both, perhaps. Their paths were separate here; for she had some unreal notions of duty, and he had too much to do in the world to clog himself with cares, or to idle an hour in the rare ecstasy of even love like this.

He passed the office, not pausing in his slow step. Some sudden impulse made him put his hand on the door as he brushed against it: just a quick, light touch; but it had all the fierce passion of a caress. He drew it back as quickly, and went on, wiping a clammy sweat from his face.

The room he had fitted up for himself was whitewashed and barely furnished; it made one's bones ache to look at the iron bedstead and chairs. Holmes's natural taste was more glowing, however smothered, than that of any saffron-robed Sybarite. It needed correction, he knew, and this [deleted: , and this] [added: ; here] was the [deleted: the] discipline. Besides, he had set apart the coming three or four years of his life to make money in, enough for the time to come. He would devote his whole strength to that work, and so be sooner done with it. Money, or place, or even power, was nothing but [added: a] means to him: other men valued them because of their influence on others. As his work in the world was only the development of himself, it was different, of course. What would it matter to his soul the day after death, if millions called his name aloud in blame or praise? Would he hear or answer then? What would it matter to him then, if he had starved with them or ruled over them? People talked of benevolence. What would it matter to him then, the misery or happiness of those yet working in this paltry life of ours? In so far as the exercise of kindly emotions or self-denial developed the higher part of his nature, it was to be commended; as for its effect on others, that he had nothing to do with. He practised self-denial constantly to strengthen the benevolent instincts. That very morning he had given his last dollar to Joe Byers, a half-starved cripple. "Chucked it at me," Joe said, "like as he'd give a bone to a dog, and be damned to him! Who thanks him?" To tell the truth, you will find no fairer exponent than this Stephen Holmes of the great idea of American sociology,—that the object of life is to grow. Circumstances had forced it on him, partly. Sitting now in his room, where he was counting the cost of becoming a merchant prince, he could look back to the time of a boyhood passed in the depths of ignorance and vice. He knew what this Self within him was; he knew how it had forced him to grope his way up, to give this hungry, insatiate soul air and freedom and knowledge. All men around him were doing the same,—thrusting and jostling and struggling, up, up. It was the American motto, Go ahead; mothers taught it to their children; the whole system was a scale of glittering prizes. He at least saw the higher meaning of the truth; he had no low ambitions. To lift this self up into a higher range of being when it had done with the uses of this,—that was his work. Self-salvation, self-elevation,—the ideas that give birth to, and destroy half of our Christianity, half of our philanthropy! Sometimes sleeping instincts in the man struggled up to assert a divinity more terrible than this growing self-existent soul that he purified and analyzed day by day: a depth of tender pity for outer pain; a fierce longing for rest, on something, in something, he cared not what. He stifled such rebellious promptings,—called them morbid. He called it morbid, too, the passion now that chilled his strong blood, and wrung out these clammy drops on his forehead, at the mere thought of this girl below.

He shut the door of his room tightly: he had no time to-day for lounging visitors. [No paragraph break]

For Holmes, quiet and steady, was sought for, if not popular, even in the free-and-easy West; one of those men who are unwillingly masters among men. Just and mild, always; with a peculiar gift that made men talk their best thoughts to him, knowing they would be understood; if any core of eternal flint lay under the simple, truthful manner of the man, nobody saw it.

He laid the bill of sale on the table; it was an altogether practical matter on which he sat in judgment, but he was going to do nothing rashly. A plain business document: he took Dr. Knowles's share in the factory; the payments made with short intervals; John Herne was to be his indorser [changed to: endorser]: it needed only the names to make it valid. Plain enough; no hint there of the tacit understanding that the purchase-money was a wedding dowry; even between Herne and himself it never was openly put into words. If he did not marry Miss Herne, the mill was her father's; that of course must be spoken of, arranged to-morrow. If he took it, then? if he married her? Holmes had been poor, was miserably poor yet, with the position and habits of a man of refinement. God knows it was not to gratify those tastes that he clutched at this money. All the slow years of work trailed up before him, that were gone,—of hard, wearing work for daily bread, when his brain had been starving for knowledge, and his soul dulled, debased with sordid trading. Was this to be always? Were these few golden moments of life to be traded for the bread and meat he ate? To eat and drink,—was that what he was here for?

As he paced the floor mechanically, some vague recollection crossed his brain of a childish story of the man standing where the two great roads of life parted. They were open before him now. Money, money,—he took the word into his heart as a miser might do. With it, he was free from these carking cares that were making his mind foul and muddy. If he had money! Slow, cool visions of triumphs rose before him outlined on the years to come, practical, if Utopian. Slow and sure successes of science and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Far off, yet surely to come,—surely for him,—a day to come [deleted: to come] when a pure social system should be universal, should have thrust out its fibres of light knitting into one the nations of the earth, when the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work, and stand up, knowing itself divine. "To insure to every man the freest development of his faculties": he said over the hackneyed dogma again and again, while the heavy, hateful years of poverty rose before him that had trampled him down. "To insure to him the freest development," he did not need to wait for St. Simon, or the golden year, he thought with a dreary gibe; money was enough, and—Miss Herne.

It was curious, that, when this woman, whom he saw every day, came up in his mind, it was always in one posture, one costume. You have noticed that peculiarity in your remembrance of some persons? Perhaps you would find, if you looked closely, that in that look or indelible gesture which your memory has caught there lies some subtile hint of the tie between your soul and theirs. Now, when Holmes had resolved coolly to weigh this woman, brain, heart, and flesh, to know how much of a hindrance she would be, he could only see her, with his artist's sense, as delicate a bloom of coloring [changed to: colouring] as eye could crave, in one immovable posture,—as he had seen her once in some masquerade or tableau vivant. June, I think it was, she chose to represent that evening,—and with her usual success; for no woman ever knew more thoroughly her material of shape or color [changed to: colour], or how to work it up. Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Some tranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the [added: snaring eyes, the] sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines deepened its hue into molten sunshine, and a great tiger-lily laid its sultry head on her breast. June? Could June become incarnate with higher poetic meaning than that which this woman gave it? Mr. Kitts, the artist I told you of, thought not, and fell in love with June and her on the spot, which passion became quite unbearable after she had graciously permitted him to sketch her,—for the benefit of Art. Three medical students and one attorney Miss Herne numbered as having been driven into a state of dogged despair on that triumphal occasion. Mr. Holmes may have quarrelled with the rendering, doubting to himself if her lip were not too thick, her eye too brassy and pale a blue for the queen of months; though I do not believe he thought at all about it. Yet the picture clung to his memory.

As he slowly paced the room to-day, thinking of this woman as his wife, light blue eyes and yellow hair and the unclean sweetness of jasmine-flowers mixed with the hot sunshine and smells of the mill. He could think of her in no other light. He might have done so; for the poor girl had her other sides for view. She had one of those sharp, tawdry intellects whose possessors are always reckoned "brilliant women, fine talkers." She was (aside from the necessary sarcasm to keep up this reputation) a good-humored [changed to: humoured] soul enough—when no one stood in her way. But if her shallow virtues or vices were palpable at all to him to-day [deleted: to-day], they became one with the torpid beauty of the oppressive summer day, and weighed on him alike with a vague disgust. The woman luxuriated in perfume; some heavy odor [changed to: odour] always hung about her. Holmes, thinking of her now, fancied he felt it stifling the air, and opened the window for breath. Patchouli or copperas,—what was the difference? The mill and his future wife came to him together; it was scarcely his fault, if he thought of them as one, or muttered, "Damnable clog!" as he sat down to write, his cold eye growing colder. But he did not argue the question any longer; decision had come keenly in one moment, fixed, unalterable.

If, through the long day, the starved heart of the man called feebly for its natural food, he called it a paltry weakness; or if the old thought of the quiet, pure little girl in the office below came back to him, he—he wished her well, he hoped she might succeed in her work, he would always be ready to lend her a helping hand. So many years (he was ashamed to think how many) he had built the thought of this girl as his wife into the future, put his soul's strength into the hope, as if love and the homely duties of husband and father were what life was given for! A boyish fancy, he thought. He had not learned then that all dreams must yield to self-reverence and self-growth. As for taking up this life of poverty and soul-starvation for the sake of a little love, it would be an ignoble martyrdom, the sacrifice of a grand unmeasured life to a shallow pleasure. He was no longer a young man now; he had no time to waste. Poor Margaret! he wondered if it hurt her now [deleted: now; added: ?].

He [added: signed the deed, and] left the writing [deleted: the writing] in the slow, quiet way natural to him, and after a while stooped to pat the dog softly, who was trying to lick his hand,—with the hard fingers shaking a little, and a smothered fierceness in the half-closed eye, like a man who is tortured and alone.

There is a miserable drama acted in other homes than the Tuileries, when men have found a woman's heart in their way to success, and trampled it down under an iron heel. Men like Napoleon must live out the law of their natures, I suppose,—on a throne or in a mill.

So many trifles that day roused the under-current of old thoughts and old hopes that taunted him,—trifles, too, that he would not have heeded at another time. Pike came in on business, a bunch of bills in his hand. A wily, keen eye he had, looking over them,—a lean face, emphasized only by cunning. No wonder Dr. Knowles cursed him for a "slippery customer," and was cheated by him the next hour. While he and Holmes were counting out the bills, a little white-headed girl crept shyly in at the door, and came up to the table,—oddly dressed, in an old-fashioned[deleted: an old-fashioned; added: a] frock fastened with great horn buttons, and with an old-fashioned anxious pair of eyes, the color of blue Delft. Holmes smoothed her hair, as she stood beside them; for he never could help caressing children or dogs. Pike looked up sharply,—then half smiled, as he went on counting.

"Ninety, ninety-five, and one hundred, all right,"—tying a bit of tape about the papers. "My Sophy, Mr. Holmes. Good girl, Sophy is. Bring her up to the mill sometimes," he said, apologetically, "on 'count of not leaving her alone. She gets lonesome at th' house."

Holmes glanced at Pike's felt hat lying on the table: there was a rusty strip of crape on it.

"Yes," said Pike, in a lower tone, "I'm father and mother, both, to Sophy now."

"I had not heard," said Holmes, kindly. "How about the boys, now?"

"Pete and John's both gone West," the man said, his eyes kindling eagerly. "'S fine boys as ever turned out of Indiana. Good eddications I give 'em both. I've felt the want of that all my life. Good eddications. Says I, 'Now, boys, you've got your fortunes, nothing to hinder your bein' President. Let's see what stuff's in ye,' says I. So they're doin' well. Wrote fur me to come out in the fall. But I'd rather scratch on, and gather up a little for Sophy here, before I stop work."

He patted Sophy's tanned little hand on the table, as if beating some soft tune. Holmes folded up the bills. Even this man could spare time out of his hard, stingy life to love, and be loved, and to be generous! But then he had no higher aim, knew nothing better.

"Well," said Pike, rising, "in case you take th' mill, Mr. Holmes, I hope we'll be agreeable. I'll strive to do my best,"—in the old fawning manner, to which Holmes nodded a curt reply.

The man stopped for Sophy to gather up her bits of broken China [deleted: China; added: “chayney”] with which she was making a tea-party on the table, and went down-stairs.

Towards evening Holmes went out,—not going through the narrow passage that led to the offices, but avoiding it by a circuitous route. If it cost him any pain to think why he did it, he showed none in his calm, observant face. Buttoning up his coat as he went: the October sunset looked as if it ought to be warm, but he was deathly cold. On the street the young doctor beset him again, with bows and news: Cox was his name, I believe; the one, you remember, who had such a Talleyrand nose for ferreting out successful men. He had to bear with him but for a few moments, however. They met a crowd of workmen at the corner, one of whom, an old man freshly washed, with honest eyes looking out of horn spectacles, waited for them by a fire-plug. It was Polston, the coal-digger,—an acquaintance, a far-off kinsman of Holmes, in fact.

"Curious person making signs to you, yonder," said Cox; "hand, I presume."

"My cousin Polston. If you do not know him, you'll excuse me?"

Cox sniffed the air down the street, and twirled his rattan, as he went. The coal-digger was abrupt and distant in his greeting, going straight to business.

The old man went on, trying not to be eager, and watching Holmes's face.

"He's tryin'. Sendin' him back—yoh know how that 'll end. Seems like as we'd his soul in our hands. S'pose,—what d' yoh think, if we give him a chance? It's yoh he fears. I see him a-watchin' yoh; what d' yoh think, if we give him a chance?" catching Holmes's sleeve. "He's old, an' he's tryin'. Heh?"

Holmes smiled.

"We didn't make the law he broke. Justice before mercy. Haven't I heard you talk to Sam in that way, long ago?"

The old man loosened his hold of Holmes's arm, looked up and down the street, uncertain, disappointed.

"The law. Yes. That's right! Yoh're a just man, Stephen Holmes."

"And yet?"——

"Yes. I dun'no'. Law's right, but Yare's had a bad chance, an' he's tryin'. An' we're sendin' him to hell. Somethin's wrong. But I think yoh're a just man," looking keenly in Holmes's face.

"A hard one, people say," said Holmes, after a pause, as they walked on.

He had spoken half to himself, and received no answer. Some blacker shadow troubled him than old Yare's fate.

"My father was outside," said Holmes, some old bitterness rising up in his tone, his gray eye lighting with some unrevenged wrong.

Polston did not speak for a moment.

"Dunnot bear malice agin her. They're dead, now. It wasn't left fur her to judge him out yonder. Yoh've yer father's eyes, Stephen, 'times. Hungry, pitiful, like women's. His got desper't' 't th' last. Drunk hard,—died of't, yoh know. But _she_ killed him,—th' sin was writ down fur her. Never was a boy I loved like him, when we was boys."

There was a short silence.

"Yoh're like yer mother," said Polston, striving for a lighter tone. "Here,"—motioning to the heavy iron jaws. "She never—let go. Somehow, too, she'd the law on her side in outward showin', an' th' right. But I hated religion, knowin' her. Well, ther's a day of makin' things clear, comin'."

They had reached the corner now, and Polston turned down the lane.

"Yoh'll think o' Yare's case?" he said.

"Yes. But how can I help it," Holmes said, lightly, "if I am like my mother here?"—putting his hand to his mouth.

"God help us, how can yoh? It's harrd to think father and mother leave their souls fightin' in their childern, cos th' love was wantin' to make them one here."

Something glittered along the street as he spoke: the silver mountings of a low-hung phaëton drawn by a pair of Mexican ponies. One or two gentlemen on horseback were alongside, attendant on a lady within [added: , Miss Herne]. She turned her fair face, and pale, greedy eyes, as she passed, and lifted her hand languidly in recognition of Holmes. Polston's face colored [changed to: coloured].

Holmes shook the grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back to the mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down at the phaëton moving idly down the road. How cold it was growing! People passing by had a sickly look, as if they were struck by the plague. He pushed the damp hair back, wiping his forehead, with another glance at the mill-women coming out of the gate, and then followed the phaëton down the hill.

[deleted: * * * * *] [End of December 1861 issue.]

PART VI. [deleted: PART VI.; added: Chapter VI

An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, with yellow trails of color [changed to: colour] dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her through the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools she passed flashed frightened away, and darkened into the muddy niches. There was a vague dread in the sudden silence. She called to the old donkey, and went faster down the hill, as if escaping from some overhanging peril, unseen. She saw Margaret coming up the road. There was a phaëton behind her, and some horsemen: she jolted the cart off into the stones to let them pass, seeing Mr. Holmes's face in the carriage as she did so. He did not look at her; had his head turned towards the gray distance. Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the color [changed to: colour] seemed jeering and mocking to the girl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did not know that it is the color of shams, and that women like this are the most deadly of shams. As the phaëton went slowly down, Margaret came nearer, meeting it on the road-side, the dust from the wheels stifling the air. Lois saw her look up, and then suddenly stand still, holding to the fence, as they met her. Holmes's cold, wandering eye turned on the little dusty figure standing there, poor and despised. Polston called his eyes hungry: it was a savage hunger that sprang into them now; a gray shadow creeping over his set face, as he looked at her, in that flashing moment. The phaëton was gone in an instant, leaving her alone in the muddy [deleted: muddy] road. One of the men looked back, and then whispered something to the lady with a laugh. She turned to Holmes, when he had finished, fixing her light, confusing eyes on his face, and softening her voice.

"Fred swears that woman we passed was your first love. Were you, then, so chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of 'King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid'?”[30]

He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her capture,—a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him,—frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,--what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word? Love? He was sick of the sickly talk,—crushed it out of his heart with a savage scorn. He remembered his father, the night he died, had said in his weak ravings that God was love. Was He? No wonder, then, He was the God of women, and children, and unsuccessful men. For him, he was done with it. He was here with stronger purpose than to yield to weaknesses of the flesh. He had made his choice,—a straight, hard path upwards; he was deaf now and forever to any word of kindness or pity. As for this woman beside him, he would be just to her, in justice to himself: she never should know the loathing in his heart: just to her as to all living creatures. Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper of bought and sold,—sold,—but he laughed it down. He sat there with his head steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and she was right,—it was a kingly face: with the same shallow, fixed smile on his mouth,—no weary cry went up to God that day so terrible in its pathos, I think: with the same dull consciousness that this was the trial night of his life,—that with the homely figure on the road-side he had turned his back on love and kindly happiness and warmth, on all that was weak and useless in the world. He had made his choice; he would abide by it,—he would abide by it. He said that over and over again, dulling down the death-gnawing of his outraged heart.

Miss Herne was quite contented, sitting by him, with herself, and the admiring world. She had no notion of trial nights in life. Not many temptations pierced through her callous, flabby temperament to sting her to defeat or triumph. There was for her no under-current of conflict, in these people whom she passed, between self and the unseen power that Holmes sneered at, whose name was love; they were nothing but movables, pleasant or ugly to look at, well- or ill-dressed. There were no dark iron bars across her life for her soul to clutch and shake madly,—nothing "in the world amiss, to be unriddled by-and-by."[31] Little Margaret, sitting by the muddy road, digging her fingers dully into the clover-roots, while she looked at the spot where the wheels had passed, looked at life differently, it may be,—or old Joe Yare by the furnace-fire, his black face and gray hair bent over a torn old spelling-book Lois had given him. The night perhaps was going to be more to them than so many rainy hours for sleeping,—the time to be looked back on through coming lives as the hour when good and ill came to them, and they made their choice, and, as Holmes said, did abide by it.

It grew cool and darker. Holmes left the phaëton before they entered town, and turned back. He was going to see this Margaret Howth, tell her what he was going to [deleted: going to; added: meant to] do. Because he was going to leave a clean record. No one should accuse him of want of honor. This girl alone of all living beings had a right to see him as he stood, justified to himself. Why she had this right, I do not think he answered to himself. Besides, he must see her, if only on business. She must keep her place at the mill: he would not begin his new life by an act of injustice, taking the bread out of Margaret's mouth. Little Margaret! He stopped suddenly, looking down into a deep pool of water by the road-side. What madness of weariness crossed his brain just then I do not know. He shook it off. Was he mad? Life was worth more to him than to other men, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through the cool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened face of the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all his iron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sitting there just where he had left her: be [deleted: be; added: he] knew she would be. When he came closer, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp her hands behind her, the fingers plucking weakly at each other. It was an old, childish fashion of hers, when she was frightened or hurt. It would only need a word, and he could be quiet and firm,—she was such a child compared to him: he always had thought of her so. He went on up to her slowly, and stopped; when she looked at him, he untied the linen bonnet that hid her face, and threw it back. How thin and tired the little face had grown! Poor child! He put his strong arm kindly about her, and stooped to kiss her hand, but she drew it away. God! what did she do that for? Did not she know that he could put his head beneath her foot then, he was so mad with pity for the woman he had wronged? Not love, he thought, controlling himself,—it was only justice to be kind to her.

"You have been ill, Margaret, these two years, while I was gone?"

He could not hear her answer; only saw that she looked up with a white, pitiful smile. Only a word it needed, he thought,—very kind and firm: and he must be quick,—he could not bear this long. But he held the little worn fingers, stroking them with an unutterable tenderness.

"You must let these fingers work for me, Margaret," he said, at last, "when I am master in the mill."

"It is true, then, Stephen?"

"It is true,—yes."

She lifted her hand to her head, uncertainly: he held it tightly, and then let it go. What right had he to touch the dust upon her shoes,—he, bought and sold? She did not speak for a time; when she did, it was a weak and sick voice.

"I am glad. I saw her, you know. She is very beautiful."

The fingers were plucking at each other again; and a strange, vacant smile on her face, trying to look glad.

"You love her, Stephen?"

He was quiet and firm enough now.

"I do not. Her money will help me to become what I ought to be. She does not care for love. You want me to succeed, Margaret? No one ever understood me as you did, child though you were."

Her whole face glowed.

"I know! I know! I did understand you!"

She said, lower, after a little while,—

"I knew you did not love her."

"There is no such thing as love in real life," he said, in his steeled voice. "You will know that, when you grow older. I used to believe in it once, myself."

She did not speak, only watched the slow motion of his lips, not looking into his eyes,—as she used to do in the old time. Whatever secret account lay between the souls of this man and woman came out now, and stood bare on their faces.

"I used to think that I, too, loved," he went on, in his low, hard tone. "But it kept me back, Margaret, and"—

He was silent.

"I know, Stephen. It kept you back"—

"And I put it away. I put it away to-night, forever."

She did not speak; stood quite quiet, her head bent on her breast. His conscience was quite [deleted: quite] clear now. But he almost wished he had not said it, she was such a weak, sickly thing. She sat down at last, burying her face in her hands, with a shivering sob. He dared not trust himself to speak again.

"I am not proud,—as a woman ought to be," she said, wearily, when he wiped her clammy forehead.

"You loved me, then?" he whispered.

Her face flashed at the unmanly triumph; her puny frame started up, away from him.

"I did love you, Stephen. I [added: did] love you now, [deleted: now,]—as you might be, not as you are,—not with those cold, [deleted: cold,] inhuman eyes. I do understand you,—I do. I know you for a better man than you know yourself this night."

She turned to go. He put his hand on her arm; something we have never seen on his face struggled up,—the better soul that she knew.

She did not come; stood leaning, her sudden strength gone, against the broken wall. There was a heavy silence. The night throbbed slow about them. Some late bird rose from the sedges of the pool, and with a frightened cry flapped its tired wings, and drifted into the dark. His eyes, through the gathering shadow, devoured the weak, trembling body, met the soul that looked at him, strong as his own. Was it because it knew and trusted him that all that was pure and strongest in his crushed nature struggled madly to be free? He thrust it down; the self-learned lesson of years was not to be conquered in a moment.

"There have been times," he said, in a smothered, restless voice, "when I thought you belonged to me. Not here, but before this life. My soul and body thirst and hunger for you, then, Margaret."

She did not answer; her hands worked feebly together. [deleted: . added: , the dull blood fainting in her veins.]

[added: Knowing only that the night yawned intolerable about her, that she was alone, going mad with being alone. No thought of heaven or God in her soul: her craving eyes seeing him only. The strong, living man that she loved: her tired-out heart goading, aching to lie down on his brawny breast for one minute, and die there,— that was all.

She did not move: underneath the pain there was power, as Knowles thought.

]

He came nearer, and held up his arras [deleted: arras; added: arms] to where she stood,—the heavy, masterful face pale and wet.

"Never, I could never help you,—as you are. It might have been, once. Good-bye [changed to: Good-by], Stephen."

Her childish way put him in mind of the old days when this girl was dearer to him than his own soul. She was so yet. He held her [added: close to his breast], looking down into her eyes. She moved uneasily; she dared not trust her resolution [deleted: her resolution; added: herself].

"You will come?" he said. "It might have been,—it shall be again."

"It may be," she said, humbly. "God is good. And I believe in you, Stephen. I will be yours some time: we cannot help it, if we would: but not as you are."

"You do not love me?" he said, flinging [added: her] off her hand [deleted: her hand] [added: , his face whitening].

She said nothing, gathered her damp shawl around her, and turned to go. Just a moment they stood, looking at each other. If the dark square figure standing there had been an iron fate trampling her young life down into hopeless wretchedness, she forgot it now. Women like Margaret are apt to forget. His eye never abated in its fierce question.

"I will wait for you yonder, if I die first," she whispered.

He came closer, waiting for an answer.

"And—I love you, Stephen."

He gathered her in his arms, and put his cold lips to hers, without a word; then turned and left her slowly.

She made no sign, shed no tear, as she stood watching him go. It was all over: she had willed it, herself, and yet—he could not go! God would not suffer it! Oh, he could not leave her,—he could not!—He went down the hill, slowly. If it were a trial of life and death for her, did he know or care?—He did not look back. What if he did not? his heart was true; he suffered in going; even now he walked wearily. God forgive her, if she had wronged him!—What did it matter, if he were hard in this life, and it hurt her a little? It would come right,—beyond, some time. But life was long.—She would not sit down, sick as she was: he might turn, and it would vex him to see her suffer.—He walked slowly; once he stopped to pick up something. She saw the deep-cut face and half-shut eyes. How often those eyes had looked into her soul, and it had answered! They never would look so any more.—There was a tree by the place where the road turned into town. If he came back, he would be sure to turn there.—How tired he walked, and slow!—If he was sick, that beautiful woman could be near him,—help him.—She never would touch his hand again,—never again, never,—unless he came back now.—He was near the tree: she closed her eyes, turning away. When she looked again, only the bare road lay there, yellow and wet. It was over, now.

How long she sat there she did not know. She tried once or twice to go to the house, but the lights seemed so far off that she gave it up and sat quiet, unconscious except of the damp stones [deleted: stones; added: stone-wall] her head leaned on and the stretch of muddy road. Some time, she knew not when, there was a heavy step beside her, and a rough hand shook hers where she stooped[added: ,] feebly tracing out the lines of mortar between the stones. It was Knowles. She looked up, bewildered.

"Hunting catarrhs, eh?" he growled, eying her keenly. "Got your father on the Bourbons, so took the chance to come and find you. He'll not miss me for an hour. That man has a natural hankering after treason against the people. Lord, Margaret! what a stiff old head he'd have carried to the guillotine! How he'd have looked at the canaille!"[32]

He helped her up gently enough.

"Your bonnet's like a wet rag,"—with a furtive glance at the worn-out face. A hungry face always, with her life unfed by its stingy few crumbs of good; but to-night it was vacant with utter loss.

She got up, trying to laugh cheerfully, and went beside him down the road.

"You saw that painted Jezebel to-night, and"—stopping abruptly.

She had not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasional snort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud. She stopped at last, with a quick gasp. Looking at her, he chafed her limp hands,—his huge, uncouth face growing pale. When she was better, he said, gravely,—

"I want you, Margaret. Not at home, child. I want to show you something."

He turned with her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helping her along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls. If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did not care.

"I want to show you a bit of hell: outskirt. You're in a fit state: it'll do you good. I'm minister there. The clergy can't attend to it just now: they're too busy measuring God's truth by the States'-Rights doctrine or the Chicago Platform.[33] Consequence, religion yields to majorities. Are you able? It's only a step."

She went on indifferently. The night was breathless and dark. Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking her face with a chill. The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching her anxiously. They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains of empty freight-cars.

There was a broken gap in the fence. He led her through it into a muddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was a smoky frame standing on piles over an open space where hogs were rooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odor changed to: odour] met them at the door. She drew back, trembling.

"Come here!" he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. "Women as fair and pure as you have come into dens like this,—and never gone away. Does it make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!"

The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers, whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep or smoking on the floor, and set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-naked children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there was hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by Pio Nono, crook in hand, with the usual inscription, "Feed my sheep."[34] The Doctor looked at it.

He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul smell.

"Look in their faces," he whispered. "There is not one of them that is not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdom and superstition through which their blood has crawled. Come closer,—here."

In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on the underground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with here and there a broad, melancholy brow and desperate jaws. One little pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes and laughed at them.

"So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!"

Margaret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at her.

"Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on."

They went out of the door. Margaret stopped, looking back.

"Did I call it a bit of hell? It's only a glimpse of the under-life of America,—God help us!— where all men are born free and equal."

The air in the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and shuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terrible pity for these people, came out of his soul now, whitening his face and dulling his eyes.

"And you," he said, savagely, "you sit by the road-side, with help in your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel with your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you,—because you are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is their loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when you want it? Tragedy! Come here,—let me hear what you call this."

He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,—wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.

"You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,—what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,—you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herself to death,—a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead.—Is Hetty here?"

She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred [deleted: barred; added: dirty] plaid skirt, and stained, faded [deleted: , faded] velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margaret leaned over her shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's dead neck.

"How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young she is!—What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margaret's lips move.

"'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'"[35]

"Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her dead face. Is your loss like hers?" he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it.

"Let me go," she said. "I am tired."

He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly enough,—for the girl suffered, he saw.

"What will you do?" he asked her then. "It is not too late,—will you help me save these people?"

She wrung her hands helplessly.

"What do you want with me?" she cried, weakly [deleted: , weakly]. "I have enough to bear."

The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; the man's face in the wan light showed a terrible life-purpose coming out bare.

"I want you to do your work. It is hard; it will wear out your strength and brain and heart. Give yourself to these people. God calls you to it. There is none to help them. Give up love, and the petty hopes of women. Help me. God calls you to the work."

She went on blindly: he followed her. For years he had set apart this girl to help him in his scheme: he would not be balked now. He had great hopes from his plan: he meant to give all he had: it was the noblest of aims. He thought some day it would work like leaven through the festering mass under the country he loved so well, and raise it to a new life. If it failed,—if it failed, and saved one life, his work was not lost. But it could not fail.

"Home!" he said, stopping her as she reached the stile,—"oh, Margaret, what is home? There is a cry going up night and day from homes like that den yonder, for help,—and no man listens."

She was weak; her brain faltered.

"Does God call me to this work? Does He call me?" she moaned.

He watched her eagerly.

"He calls you. He waits for your answer. Swear to me that you will help His people. Give up father and mother and love, and go down as Christ did. Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus' love to these wretches on the brink of hell. Live with them, raise them with you."

She looked up, white; she was a weak, weak woman, sick for her natural food of love.

"Is it my work?"

"It is your work. Listen to me, Margaret," softly. "Who cares for you? You stand alone to-night. There is not a single human heart that calls you nearest and best. Shiver, if you will,—it is true. The man you wasted your soul on left you in the night and cold to go to his bride,—is sitting by her now, holding her hand in his."

He waited a moment, looking down at her, until she should understand.

"Do you think you deserved this of God? I know that yonder on the muddy road you looked up to Him, and knew it was not just; that you had done right, and this was your reward. I know that for these two years you have trusted in the Christ you worship to make it right, to give you your heart's desire. Did He do it? Did He hear your prayer? Does He care for your weak love, when the nations of the earth are going down? What is your poor hope to Him, when the very land you live in is a wine-press that will be trodden some day by the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God? O Christ!—if there be a Christ,—help me to save it!"

He looked up,—his face white with pain. After a time he said to her,—

"Help me, Margaret! Your prayer was selfish; it was not heard. Give up your idle hope that Christ will aid you. Swear to me, this night when you have lost all, to give yourself to this work."

The storm had been dark and windy: it cleared now slowly, the warm summer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behind the gray. It seemed to Margaret like a blessing; for her brain rose up stronger, more healthful.

"I will not swear," she said, weakly. "I think He heard my prayer. I think He will answer it. He was a man, and loved as we do. My love is not selfish; it is the best gift God has given me."

Knowles went slowly with her to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, and she passed through the dark passage to her own room.

Putting her damp shawl off, she sat down on the floor, leaning her head on a low chair,—one her father had given her for a Christmas gift when she was little. How fond Holmes and her father used to be of each other! Every Christmas he spent with them. She remembered them all now. "He was sitting by her now, holding her hand in his." She said that over to herself, though it was not hard to understand.

After a long time, her mother came with a candle to the door.

"Good-night, Margaret. Why, your hair is wet, child!"

For Margaret, kissing her good-night, had laid her head down a minute on her breast. She stroked the hair a moment, and then turned away.

"Mother, could you stay with me to-night?"

"Why, no, Maggie,—your father wants me to read to him."

"Oh, I know. Did he miss me to-night,—father?"

"Not much; we were talking old times over,—in Virginia, you know."

"I know; good-night."

She went back to the chair. Tige was there,—for he used to spend half of his time on the farm. She put her arm about his head. God knows how lonely the poor child was when she drew the dog so warmly to her heart: not for his master's sake alone; but it was all she had. He grew tired at last, and whined, trying to get out.

"Will you go, Tige?" she said, and opened the window.

He jumped out, and she watched him going towards town. Such a little thing, it was! But not even a dog "called her nearest and best."

Let us be silent; the story of the night is not for us to read. Do you think that He, who in the far, dim Life holds the worlds in His hand, knew or cared how alone the child was? What if she wrung her thin hands, grew sick with the slow, mad, solitary tears?—was not the world to save, as Knowles said?

He, too, had been alone; He had come unto His own, and His own received him not: so, while the struggling world rested, unconscious, in infinite calm of right, He came close to her with human eyes that had loved, and not been loved, and had suffered with that pain. And, trusting Him, she only said, "Show me my work! Thou that takest away the pain of the world, have mercy upon me!"

[added: Chapter VII]

For that night, at least, Holmes swept his soul clean of doubt and indecision; one of his natures was conquered,—finally, he thought. Polston, if he had seen his face as he paced the street slowly home to the mill, would have remembered his mother's the day she died. How the stern old woman met death half-way! why should she fear? she was as strong as he. Wherein had she failed of duty? her hands were clean: she was going to meet her just reward.

It was different with Holmes, of course, with his self-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he thought,—a life of growth, labor [changed to: labour], achievement,—eternal.

"Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast,"—favorite [changed to: favourite] words with him. He liked to study the nature of the man who spoke them; because, I think, it was like his own,—a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability of love and hate and suffering, and over all (the peculiar identity of the man,) a cold, speculative eye of reason, that looked down into the passion and depths of his growing self, and calmly noted them, a lesson for all time.[37]

"Ohne Hast." Going slowly through the night, he strengthened himself by marking how all things in Nature accomplish a perfected life through slow, narrow fixedness of purpose,—each life complete in itself: why not his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles—that old skeptic [deleted: skeptic; added: sceptic]—believed in it, and called it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? "Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhält er nicht dich, mich, sich selbst?”[38]

There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, like half-comprehended music,—as simple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman's heart: it touched him deeper than his power of control. Pah! it was a dream of Faust's; he, too, had his Margaret; he fell, through that love.[39]

He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtile remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the man, only the future could tell.

Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines up to him.

The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the square. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was not strict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles's carelessness.

It was Lois and her father,—Joe Yare being feeder that night. They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,—a very comfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,—down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.

The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown old, as Polston said,—Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.

She came up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls and made a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now.

Old Yare stood in the background, his hat in his hand, stooping in his submissive negro fashion, with a frightened watch on Holmes.

"Do you stay here, Lois?" he asked, kindly, turning his back on the old man.

"'Twas fur her I comed back hyur. 'Twas a resk,"—with a dumb look of entreaty at Holmes,—"but fur her I thort I’d [changed to: I ’d ] try it. I know 'twas [changed to: know’t was] a resk; but I thort them as cared fur Lo wud be merciful. She's [changed to: She ’s] a good girl, Lo. She’s [changed to: She ’s] all I hev."

"It's [changed to: It ’s] not just," he said, savagely. "What good'll [changed to: good ’ll] it do me to go back ther'? I was goin' down, down, an' bringin' th' others with me. What good'll [changed to: good ’ll] it do you or the rest to hev me ther'? To make me afraid? It's poor learnin' frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Who cared? No man cared fur my soul, till I thieved 'n' robbed; 'n' then judge 'n' jury 'n' jailers was glad to pounce on me. Will yoh gev me a chance? will yoh?"

It was a desperate face before him; but Holmes never knew fear.

"Stand aside," he said, quietly. "To-morrow I will see you. You need not try to escape."

He passed him, and went slowly up through the vacant mill to his chamber.

The man sat down on the lower step a few moments, quite quiet, crushing his hat up in a slow, steady way, looking up at the mouldy cobwebs on the wall. He got up at last, and went in to Lois. Had she heard? The old scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought,—but it might be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He tried to be cheerful, eating his supper: she need not know until to-morrow. He would get out of the town to-night, or—There were different ways to escape. When he had done, he told her to go; but she would not.

"Let me stay th' night," she said. "I ben't afraid o' th' mill."

"Why, Lo," he said, laughing, "yoh used to say yer death was hid here, somewheres."

The glimmering shadows changed and faded for an hour. The man sat quiet. There was not much in the years gone to soften his thought, as it grew desperate and cruel: there was oppression and vice heaped on him, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: a blank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easy to bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thief? what if all the sullen revenge of his nature had made him an outcast from the poorest poor? Was there no latent good in this soul for which Christ died, that a kind hand might not have brought to life? None? Something, I think, struggled up in the touch of his hand, catching the skirt of his child's dress, when it came near him, with the timid tenderness of a mother touching her dead baby's hair,--as something holy, far off, yet very near: something in his old crime-marked face,—a look like this dog's, putting his head on my knee,—a dumb, unhelpful love in his eyes, and the slow memory of a wrong done to his soul in a day long past. A wrong to both, you say, perhaps; but if so, irreparable, and never to be recompensed. Never?

"Yoh must go, my little girl," he said at last.

Whatever he did must be done quickly. She came up, combing the thin gray hairs through her fingers.

"Father, I dunnot understan' what it is, rightly. But stay with me,—stay, father!"

She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand, where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was glad now [changed to: now,] and thankful [changed to: thankful,] for every fault and deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer.

He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street. When he left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. God knows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came back to watch and help.

Old Yare wandered through the great loom-rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,—that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in his hand, going over the years gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man above him,—with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,—of the corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam',"—of the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went back to Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chub she used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life he had meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting off and putting off until now. And now—Did nothing lie before him but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had learned better, and was a "dam' nigger"?

"I'll [changed to I ’ll] not leave my girl!" he muttered, going up and down,—"I'll [changed to: I ’ll] not leave my girl!"

If Holmes did sleep above him, the trial of the day, of which we have seen nothing, came back sharper in sleep. While the strong self in the man lay torpid, whatever holier power was in him came out, undaunted by defeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slighted messengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller, kindlier life. Let us hope that they did so win him; let us hope that even in that unreal world the better nature of the man triumphed at last, and claimed its reward before the terrible reality broke upon him.

Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up in one of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards. She remembered how she used to play in them, before she went into the mill. The mill,—even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come, the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow. Whatever danger was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch of ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss. In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster. Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any remorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night,—a monster that kept her wakeful with a dull, mysterious terror.

When the night grew sultry and deepest, she started from her half-doze to see her father come stealthily out and go down the street. She must have slept, she thought, rubbing her eyes, and watching him out of sight,--and then, creeping out, turned to glance at the mill. She cried out, shrill with horror. It was a live monster now,—in one swift instant, alive with fire,—quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turned to fly, and then—He was alone, dying! He had been so kind to her! She wrung her hands, standing there a moment. It was a brave hope that was in her heart, and a prayer on her lips never left unanswered, as she hobbled, in her lame, slow way, up to the open black door, and, with one backward look, went in.

[deleted: * * * * * ; end of January 1862 issue]

A STORY OF TO-DAY. [Deleted]

PART V. [changed to: Chapter VIII]

There was a dull smell of camphor; a further [changed to: farther] sense of coolness and prickling wet on Holmes's hot, cracking face and hands; then silence and sleep again. Sometime—when, he never knew—a gray light stinging his eyes like pain, and again a slow sinking into warm, unsounded darkness and unconsciousness. It might be years, it might be ages. Even in after-life, looking back, he never broke that time into weeks or days: people might so divide it for him, but he was uncertain, always: it was a vague vacuum in his memory: he had drifted out of coarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in its calm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and woke him, it was feebly done: he came back reluctant, weak: the quiet clinging to him, as if he had been drowned in Lethe, and had brought its calming mist with him, out of the shades. [40]

The low chatter of voices, the occasional lifting of his head on the pillow, the very soothing draught, came to him, unreal at first: parts only of the dull, lifeless pleasure. There was a sharper memory pierced it sometimes, making him moan and try to sleep,—a remembrance of great, cleaving pain, of falling giddily, of owing life to some one, and being angry that he owed it, in the pain. Was it he that had borne it? He did not know,—nor care: it made him tired to think. Even when he heard the name Stephen Holmes, it had but a far-off meaning: he never woke enough to know if it were his or not. He learned, long after, to watch the red light curling among the shavings in the grate when they made a fire in the evenings, to listen to the voices of the women by the bed, to know that the pleasantest belonged to the one with the low, shapeless figure, and to call her Lois when he wanted a drink, long before he knew himself.

They were very long, pleasant days in early December. The sunshine was pale, but it suited his hurt eyes better: it crept slowly in the mornings over the snuff-colored [changed to: snuff-coloured] carpet on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling,—curdling pools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls and rustling curtain and transparent crimson, into sleeps that lasted all day.

He was not conscious how he knew he was in a hospital: but he did know it, vaguely; thought sometimes of the long halls outside of the door with ranges of rooms opening into them, like this, and of very barns of rooms on the other side of the building with rows of white cots where the poor [changed to: poorer] patients lay: a stretch of travel from which his brain came back to his snug fireplace, quite tired, and to Lois sitting knitting by it. He called the little Welsh-woman, "Sister," too, who used to come in a stuff dress, and white bands about her face, to give his medicine and gossip with Lois in the evening: she had a comical voice, like a cricket chirping. There was another with a real Scotch brogue, who came and listened sometimes, bringing a basket of undarned stockings: the doctor told him one day how fearless and skilful she was, every summer going to New Orleans when the yellow fever came. She died there the next June: but Holmes never, somehow, could realize a martyr in the cheery, freckled-faced woman whom he always remembered darning stockings in the quiet fire-light. It was very quiet; the voices about him were pleasant and low. If he had drifted from any shock of pain into a sleep like death, some of the stillness hung about him yet; but the outer life was homely and fresh and natural.

The doctor used to talk to him a little; and sometimes one or two of the patients from the eye-ward would grow tired of sitting about in the garden-alleys, and would loiter in, if Lois would give them leave; but their talk wearied him, jarred him as strangely as if one had begun on politics and price-currents to the silent souls in Hades.[41] It was enough thought for him to listen to the whispered stories of the sisters in the long evenings, and, half-heard, try and make an end to them; to look drowsily down into the garden, where the afternoon sunshine was still so summer-like that a few hollyhocks persisted in showing their honest red faces along the walls, and the very leaves that filled the paths would not wither, but kept up a wholesome ruddy brown. One of the sisters had a poultry-yard in it, which he could see: the wall around it was of stone covered with a brown feathery lichen, which every rooster in that yard was determined to stand on, or perish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch, through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition and the uproarious exultation [deleted: and the uproarious exultation] of the successful aspirant with an amused smile.

"One'd thenk," said Lois, sagely, "a chicken never stood on a wall before, to hear 'em, or a hen laid an egg."

Nor did Holmes smile once because the chicken burlesqued man: his thought was too single for that yet. It was long [added: , too,] before he thought of the people who came in quietly to see him as anything but shadows, or wished for them to come again. Lois, perhaps, was the most real thing in life then to him: growing conscious, day by day, as he watched her, of his old life over the gulf. Very slowly conscious: with a weak groping to comprehend the sudden, awful change that had come on him, and then forgetting his old life, and the change, and the pity he felt for himself, in the vague content of the fire-lit room, and his nurse with her interminable knitting through the long afternoons, while the sky without would thicken and gray and a few still flakes of snow would come drifting down to whiten the brown fields,--with no chilly thought of winter, but only to make the quiet autumn more quiet. Whatever honest, commonplace affection was in the man came out in a simple way to this Lois, who ruled his sick whims and crotchets in such a quiet, sturdy way [deleted: way; added: fashion]. Not because she had risked her life to save his; even when he understood that, he recalled it with an uneasy, heavy gratitude; but the drinks she made him, and the plot they laid to smuggle in some oysters in defiance of all rules, and the cheerful pock-marked face he never forgot.

Doctor Knowles came sometimes, but seldom: never talked, when he did come: late in the evening generally: and then would punch his skin, and look at his tongue, and shake the bottles on the mantel-shelf with a grunt that terrified Lois into the belief that the other doctor was a quack, and her patient was totally undone. He would sit, grim [changed to: grum] enough, with his feet higher than his head, chewing an unlighted cigar, and leave them both thankful when he saw proper to go.

The truth is, Knowles was thoroughly out of place in these little mending-shops called sick-chambers, where bodies are taken to pieces, and souls set right. He had no faith in your slow, impalpable cures: all reforms were to be accomplished by a wrench, from the abolition of slavery to the pulling of a tooth.

He had no especial sympathy with Holmes, either: the men were started in life from opposite poles: and with all the real tenderness under his surly, rugged habit, it would have been hard to touch him with the sudden doom fallen on this man, thrown crippled and penniless upon the world, helpless, it might be, for life. He would have been apt to tell you, savagely, that "he wrought for it."

Besides, it made him out of temper to meet the sisters. Knowles could have sketched for you with a fine decision of touch the role played by the Papal power in the progress of humanity,—how jar [changed to: far] it served as a stepping-stone, and the exact period when it became a wearisome clog. The world was done with it now, utterly. Its breath was only poisoned, with coming death. So the homely live charity of these women, their work, which, no other hands were ready to take, jarred against his abstract theory, and irritated him, as an obstinate fact always does run into the hand of a man who is determined to clutch the very heart of a matter. Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle of a world, in spite of the positive philosophers [changed to: Positive Philosophy], you know.

Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflects all men and creeds alike, like colorless [changed to: colourless] water, drawing the truth from all, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it went on its slow way. An intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truth he did know was so terribly real to him, he had suffered from the evil, and [deleted: he had suffered from the evil, and] there was such sick, throbbing pity in his heart for men who suffered as he had done! And then, fanatics must make history for conservative men to learn from, I suppose.

If Knowles shunned the hospital, there was another place he shunned more,—the place where his communist [changed to: Communist] buildings were to have stood. He went out there once, as one might go alone to bury his dead out of his sight, the day after the mill was burnt,—looking first at the smoking mass of hot bricks and charred shingles, so as clearly to understand how utterly dead his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely around it, his hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out their winter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles didn't seem a bit cut up about it." Then he went out to the farm he had meant to buy, as I told you, and looked at it in the same stolid way. It was a dull day in October. The Wabash crawled moodily past his feet, the dingy prairie stretched drearily away on the other side, while the heavy-browed Indiana hills stood solemnly looking down the plateau where the buildings were to have risen.[42]

Well, most men have some plan for [deleted: for; changed to: of] life, into which all the strength and the keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try to make it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards at their own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out his dream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known men so build their heart's blood and brains into their work, that, when it tumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day in October; but if it hurt him, no man knew it. He sat there, looking at the broad plateau, whistling softly to himself, a long time. He had meant that a great many hearts should be made better and happier there; he had dreamed——God knows what he had dreamed, of which this reality was the foundation,—of how much [added: world-]freedom, or beauty, or kindly life this was the heart or seed. It was all over now. All the afternoon the muddy sky hung low over the hills and dull prairie, while he sat there looking at the dingy gloom: just as you and I have done, perhaps, some time, thwarted in some true hope,— sore and bitter against God, because He did not see how much His universe needed our pet reform.

He got up at last, and without a sigh went slowly away, leaving the courage and self-reliance of his life behind him, buried with that one beautiful, fair dream of life. He never came back again. People said Knowles was quieter since his loss; but I think only God saw the depth of the difference. When he was leaving the plateau, that day, he looked back at it, as if to say good-bye,—not to the dingy fields and river, but to the Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart, and given up now forever. As he looked, the warm, red sun came out, lighting up with a heartsome warmth the whole gray day. Some blessing power seemed to look at him from [added: this graveyard of his hopes, from] the gloomy hills, the prairie, and the river, which he [added: never] was to see again. His hope accomplished could not have looked at him with surer content and fulfilment. He turned away, ungrateful and moody. Long afterwards he remembered the calm and brightness which his hand had not been raised to make, and understood the meaning of its promise.

He went to work now in earnest: he had to work for his bread-and-butter, you understand? Restless, impatient at first; but we will forgive him that: you yourself were not altogether submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built hope [deleted: hope; changed to: expectation] of life was destroyed by some chance, as you called it, no more controllable than this paltry burning of a mill. Yet, now that the great hope was gone on which his brain had worked with rigid, fierce intentness, now that his hands were powerless to redeem a perishing class, he had time to fall into careless, kindly habit: he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, of course. He was seized with a curiosity to know what plan in living these people had who crossed his way on the streets; if they were disappointed, like him. [added: Humbled, he hardly knew why: vague, uncertain in action. Quit dogging old Huff with his advice; trotted about the streets with a cowed look, that, if one could have seen into the jaded old heart under his snuffy waistcoat, would have seemed pitiful enough.] He went sometimes to read the papers to old Tim Poole, who was bed-ridden, and did not pish or pshaw once at his maundering about secession or the misery in his back. Went to church sometimes: the sermons were bigotry, always, to his notion, sitting on a back seat, squirting tobacco-juice about him; but the simple, old-fashioned hymns brought the tears to his eyes:—[added:"] They sounded to him like his mother's voice, singing in paradise [changed to: Paradise:”]: he hoped she could not see how things had gone on here,—how all that was honest and strong in his life had fallen in that infernal mill." [deleted: “]Once or twice he went down Crane Alley, and lumbered up three pair of stairs to the garret where Kitts had his studio,—got him orders, in fact, for two portraits; and when that pale-eyed young man, in a fit of confidence, one night, with a very red face drew back the curtain from his grand "Fall of Chapultepec," and watched him with a lean and hungry look, Knowles, who knew no more about painting than a gorilla, walked about, looking through his fist at it, saying, "how fine the chiaroscuro was, and that it was a devilish good thing altogether."[43] "Well, well," he soothed his conscience, going down-stairs, "maybe that bit of canvas is as much to that poor chap as the phalanstery [changed to: Phalanstery] was once to another fool." [44] And so went on through the gas-lit streets into his parishes in cellars and alleys, with a sorer heart, but cheerfuller words, now that he had nothing but words to give.

The only place where he hardened his heart was in the hospital with Holmes. After he had wakened to full consciousness, Knowles thought the man a beast to sit there uncomplaining day after day, cold and grave, as if the lifeful warmth of the late autumn were enough for him. Did he understand the iron fate laid on him? Where was the strength of the self-existent soul now? Did he know that it was a balked, defeated life, that waited for him, vacant of the triumphs he had planned? "The self-existent soul! stopped in its growth by chance, this omnipotent deity,—the chance burning of a mill!" Knowles muttered to himself, looking at Holmes. With a dim flash of doubt, as he said it, whether there might not, after all, be a Something,—some deep of calm, of eternal order, where [added: he and Holmes,] these coarse chances, these wrestling souls, these creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian, even that namby-pamby Kitts and his picture, might be unconsciously working out their part. Looking out of the hospital-window, he saw the deep of the stainless blue, impenetrable, with the stars unconscious in their silence of the maddest raging of the petty world. There was such calm! such infinite love and justice! it was around, above him; it held him, it held the world,—all Wrong, all Right! For an instant the turbid heart of the man cowered, awe-struck, as yours or mine has done when some swift touch of music or human love gave us a cleaving glimpse of the great I AM. The next, he opened the newspaper in his hand. What part in the eternal order could that hold? or slavery, or secession, or civil war? No harmony could be infinite enough to hold such discords, he thought, pushing the whole matter from him in despair. Why, the experiment of self-government, the problem of the ages, was crumbling in ruin! So he despaired [added: ,] just as Tige did the night the mill fell about his ears, in full confidence that the world had come to an end now, without hope of salvation,—crawling out of his cellar in dumb amazement, when the sun rose as usual the next morning.

Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languid breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's face were stolid defiance or submission: the dumb kings might have looked thus beneath the feet of Pharaoh. When he walked over the floor, too, weak as he was, it was with the old iron tread. He asked Knowles presently what business he had gone into.

"As thankless a task as that of Moses," said the other, watching him curiously. "For you will not see the pleasant land,—you will not go over." [46]

The old man's flabby face darkened.

"I know," he said.

He glanced involuntarily out at the blue, and the clear-shining, eternal stars. If he could but believe in the To-Morrow! [deleted: If he could but believed in the To-Morrow!]

"I suppose," he said, after a while, cheerfully, "I must content myself with Lois's creed, here,—'It'll come right some time.'"

Lois looked up from the saucepan she was stirring, her face growing quite red, nodding emphatically some half-dozen times.

[added: “After all,” said Holmes kindly, “this chance may have forced you on the true road to success for your new system of Sociology. Only untainted natures could be fitted for self-government.] Do you find your [deleted: your; added: the] fallow field easily worked?"

Knowles fidgeted uneasily.

"No. Fact is, I'm beginning to think there's a good deal of an obstacle in blood. I find difficulty, much difficulty, Sir, in giving [added: to] the youngest child true ideas of absolute freedom and unselfish heroism."

"Well,—of course,—that is the true theory; [added: reason is the only yoke that should be laid upon a free born soul

Holmes stooped suddenly to pat Tiger, hiding a furtive smile. The old man went on, anxiously,—

"Old Mr. Howth says that is the end of all self-governments: from anarchy to despotism, he says. [added: Brute force must come in.] Old people are apt to be set in their ways, you know. Honestly, we do not find unlimited freedom answer in the House. I hope much from a woman's assistance: I have destined her for this work always: she has great latent power of sympathy and endurance, such as can bring the Christian teaching home to these wretches."

"The Christian?" said Holmes.

"Well, yes. I am not a believer myself, you know; but I find that it takes hold of these people more vitally than more abstract faiths: I suppose because of the humanity of Jesus. In Utopia, of course, we shall live from scientific principles; but they do not answer in the House."

"Who is the woman?" asked Holmes, carelessly.

The other watched him keenly.

"She is coming for five years. Margaret Howth."

He patted the dog with the same hard, unmoved touch.

"It is a religious duty with her. Besides, she must do something. They have been almost starving since the mill was burnt."

Holmes's face was bent; he could not see it. When he looked up, Knowles thought it more rigid, immovable than before.

When Knowles was going away, Holmes said to him,—

"When does Margaret Howth go into that devils' den?"

"The House? On New-Year's." The scorn in him was too savage to be silent. [added: “It is the best time to begin a new life. Yourself, now,] You [changed to: you] will have fulfilled your design by that time,—of marriage?"

Holmes was leaning on the mantel-shelf; his very lips were pale.

"Yes, I shall, I shall,"—in his low, hard tone.

Some sudden dream of warmth and beauty flashed before his gray eyes, lighting them as Knowles never had seen before.

"Miss Herne is beautiful,—let me congratulate you in Western fashion."

The old man did not hide his sneer.

Holmes bowed.

"I thank you, for her."

Lois held the candle to light the Doctor out of the long passages.

"Yoh hevn't seen Barney out 't Mr. Howth's, Doctor? He's ther' now."

"No. When shall you have done waiting on this—man, Lois? God help you, child!"

Lois's quick instinct answered,—

"He's very kind. He's like a woman fur kindness to such as me. When I come to die, I'd like eyes such as his to look at, tender, pitiful."

"Women are fools alike," grumbled the Doctor. "Never mind. 'When you come to die?' What put that into your head? Look up."

The child sheltered the flaring candle with her hand.

"I've no tho't o' dyin'," she said, laughing.

There was a gray shadow about her eyes, a peaked look to the face, he never saw before, looking at her now with a physician's eyes.

When they reached the door, he held out his hand, the first time he ever had done it to her, and then waited, patting her on the head.

"I think it'll come right, Lois," he said, dreamily, looking out into the night. "You're a good girl. I think it'll all come right. For you and me. Some time. Good night, child."

After he was a long way down the street, he turned to nod good-night again to the comical little figure in the doorway.

[Added: CHAPTER IX]

If Knowles hated anybody that night, he hated the man he had left standing there with pale, heavy jaws, and heart of iron; he could have cursed him, standing there. He did not see how, after he was left alone, the man lay with his face to the wall, holding his bony hand to his forehead, with a look in his eyes that if you had seen, you would have thought his soul had entered on that path whose steps take hold on hell.

There was no struggle in his face; whatever was the resolve he had reached in the solitary hours when he had stood so close upon the borders of death, it was unshaken now; but the heart, crushed and stifled before, was taking its dire revenge. If ever it had hungered, through the cold, selfish days, for God's help, or a woman's love, it hungered now with a craving like death. If ever he had thought how bare and vacant the years would be, going down to the grave with lips that never had known a true [added: wife’s] kiss of real affection [deleted: of real affection], he remembered it now, when it was too late, with bitterness such as wrings a man's heart but once in a lifetime. If ever he had denied to his own soul this Margaret, called her alien or foreign, he [deleted: he; added: it] called her now, when it was too late, to her rightful place; there was not a thought nor a hope in the darkest depths of his nature that did not cry out for her help that night,—for her, a part of himself,—now, when it was too late. He went over all the years gone, and pictured the years to come; he remembered the money that was to help his divine soul upward; he thought of it with a curse, [added: getting up and] pacing the floor of the narrow room, slowly and quietly. Looking out into the still starlight and the quaint garden, he tried to fancy this woman as he knew her, after the restless power of her soul should have been chilled and starved into a narrow, lifeless duty. He fancied her old, and stern, and sick of life, she that might have been—what might they not have been, together? And he had driven her to this for money,—money!

It was of no use to repent of it now. He had frozen the love out of her heart, long ago. He remembered (all that he did remember of the blank night after he was hurt) that he had seen her white, worn-out face looking down at him; that she did not touch him; and that, when, one of the sisters told her she might take her place, and sponge his forehead, she said, bitterly, she had no right to do it, that he was no friend of hers. He saw and heard that, unconscious to all else; he would have known it, if he had been dead, lying there. It was too late now: why need he think of what might have been? Yet he did think of it through the long winter's night,—each moment his thought of the life to come, or of her, growing more tender and more bitter. Do you wonder at the remorse of this man? Wait, then, until you lie alone, as he had done, through days as slow, revealing as ages, face to face with God and death. Wait until you go down so close to eternity that the life you have lived stands out before you in the dreadful bareness in which God sees it,—as you shall see it some day from heaven or hell: money, and hate, and love will stand in their true light then. Yet, coming back to life again, he held whatever resolve he had reached down there with his old iron will: all the pain he bore in looking back to the false life before, or the ceaseless remembrance that it was too late now to atone for that false life, made him the stronger to abide by that resolve, to go on the path self-chosen, let the end be what it might. Whatever the resolve was, it did not still the gnawing hunger in his heart that night, which every trifle made more fresh and strong.

There was a wicker-basket that Lois had left by the fire, piled up with bits of cloth and leather out of which she was manufacturing Christmas gifts; a pair of great woollen socks, which one of the sisters had told him privately Lois meant for him, lying on top. As with all of her people, Christmas was the great day of the year to her. Holmes could not but smile, looking at them. Poor Lois!—Christmas would be here soon, then? And sitting by the covered fire, he went back to Christmases gone, the thought of all others that brought her [deleted: her; added: Margret] nearest and warmest to him: since he was a boy they had been together on that day. With his hand over his eyes he sat quiet by the fire until morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call to another that they would have holiday on Christmas [added: week]. It was coming, he thought, rousing himself,—but never as it had been: that could never be again. Yet it was strange how this thought of Christmas took hold of him[added: after this,]— famished his heart. As it approached in the slow-coming winter, the days growing shorter, and the nights longer and more solitary, so Margaret became more real to him,—not rejected and lost, but as the wife she might have been, with the simple passionate love she gave him once. The thought grew intolerable to him; yet there was not a homely pleasure of those years gone, when the old school-master kept high holiday on Christmas, that he did not recall and linger over with a boyish yearning, now that these things were over forever. He chafed under his weakness. If the day would but come when he could go out and conquer his fate, as a man ought to do! On Christmas eve he would put an end to these torturing taunts, his soul should not be balked longer of its rightful food. [deleted: his soul should’nt be balked longer of its rightful food.; added: be done with them, let the sacrifice be what it might.] For I fear that even now Stephen Holmes thought of his own need and his own hunger.

He watched Lois knitting and patching her poor little gifts, with a vague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter until he should be free, with his life in his hand again. She left him [deleted: him; added: the hospital] at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her go: he fancied the close air of the hospital [deleted: of the hospital] was hurting her, seeing at night the strange shadow growing on her face. I do not think he ever said to her that he knew all she had done for him [added: , or thanked her]; but no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved could look into his eyes and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would wish, like Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, for her to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every day to see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his soup, telling him, child-like, how many days it was until Christmas. He knew that, as well as she, waiting through the cold, slow hours, in his solitary room. He thought sometimes she had some eager petition to offer him, when she stood watching him wistfully, twisting her hands together; but she always smothered it with a sigh, and, tying her little woollen cap, went away, walking more slowly, he thought, every day.

Do you remember how Christmas came last [deleted: last; added: that] year? how there was a waiting pause, when the great [deleted: great] States stood still, and from the peoples came the first awful murmurs of the storm that was to shake the earth? how men's hearts failed them for fear, how women turned pale and held their children closer to their breasts, while they heard a far cry of lamentation for their country that had fallen? Do you remember how, through [deleted: through; added: amidst] the fury of men's anger, the storehouses of God were opened for that land? how the very sunshine gathered new splendors [changed to: splendours], the rains more fruitful moisture, until the earth poured forth an unknown fulness of life and beauty? Was there no promise there, no prophecy? Do you remember, while the very life of the people hung in doubt before them, while the angel of death came again to pass over the land, and there was no blood on any door-post to keep him from that house, how slowly [deleted: slowly; changed to: serenely] the old earth folded in her harvest, dead, till it should waken to a stronger life? [47] how quietly, as the time came near for the birth of Christ, this old earth made ready for his coming, heedless of the clamor [changed to: clamour] of men? how the air grew fresher [added: above], day by day, and the gray deep silently opened for the snow to go down and screen and whiten and make holy that fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did not fail in its quiet warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feeble way tried to make ready for the birth of Christ. There was a healthier glow than terror stirred in their hearts; because of the vague, great dread without, it may be, they drew closer together round household fires, were kindlier in the good old-fashioned way; old friendships were wakened, old times talked over, fathers and mothers and children planned homely ways to show the love in their hearts and to welcome in Christmas. Who knew but it might be the last? Let us be thankful for that happy Christmas-day. What if it were the last? What if, when another comes, and another, some [deleted: some; added: one] voice, the kindest and cheerfullest then, shall never say "Happy Christmas" to us again? Let us be thankful for that day the more,--accept it the more as a sign of that which will surely come.

Holmes, even, in his dreary room and drearier thought, felt the warmth and expectant stir creeping through the land as the day drew near. Even in the hospital, the sisters were in a busy flutter, decking their little chapel with flowers, and preparing a Christmas [deleted: Christmas] fête for their patients. The doctor, as he bandaged his broken arm, hinted at faint rumors [changed to: rumours] in the city of masquerades and concerts. Even Knowles, who had not visited the hospital for weeks, relented and came back, moody and grim [changed to: grum]. He brought Kitts with him, and started him on talking of how they kept Christmas in Ohio on his mother's farm; and the poor soul, encouraged by the silence of two of his auditors, and the intense interest of Lois in the background, mazed on about Santa-Claus trees and Virginia reels until the clock struck twelve and Knowles began to snore.

Christmas was coming. As he stood, day after day, looking out of the gray window, he could see the signs of its coming even in the shop-windows glittering with miraculous toys, in the market-carts with their red-faced drivers and heaps of ducks and turkeys, in every stage-coach or omnibus that went by crowded with boys home for the holidays, hallooing for Bell or Lincoln, forgetful that the election was over and Carolina out. [48]

Pike came to see him one day, his arms full of a bundle, which turned out to be an accordion for Sophy.

"Christmas, you know," he said, taking off the brown paper, while he was cursing the Cotton States the hardest, and gravely kneading at the keys, and stretching it until he made as much discord as five Congressmen. "I think Sophy will like that," he said, [added: looking at it sideways, and] tying it up carefully.

"I am sure she will," said Holmes,—and did not think the man a fool for one moment.

Always going back, this Holmes, when he was alone, to the certainty that homecomings or children's kisses or Christmas feasts were not for such as he,—never could be, though he sought for the old time in bitterness of heart; and so, dully remembering his resolve, and waiting for Christmas eve, when, he might end it all. Not one of the myriads of happy children listened more intently to the clock clanging off hour after hour than the silent, stern man who had no hope in that day that was coming.

He learned to watch even for poor Lois coming up the corridor every day,--being the only tie that bound the solitary man to the inner world of love and warmth. The deformed little body was quite alive with Christmas now, and brought its glow with her, in her weak way. Different from the others, he saw with a curious interest. The day was more real to her than to them. Not because, only, the care she had of everybody and everybody had of her seemed to reach its culmination of kindly thought for the Christmas time; not because, as she sat talking slowly, stopping for breath, her great fear seemed to be that she would not have gifts enough to go round; but deeper than that,—the day was real to her. As if it were actually true that the Master in whom she believed was freshly born into the world once a year, to waken all that was genial and noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honor [changed to: honour] and pride and love did come [deleted: come; added: flash into the realms below heaven]with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. (Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of life shall be bared, this man with his self-reliant soul will know the subtile instincts that drew him to true manhood and feeling by the homely practice of poor Lois. He did not see them now.) [deleted: Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of life shall be bared, this man with his self-reliant soul will know the subtile instincts that drew him to true manhood and feeling by the homely practice of poor Lois. He did not see them now.)] A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. Love coming into the world!—the idea pleased his artistic taste, being simple and sublime. Lois used to tell him, while she feebly tried to set his room in order, of all her plans,—of how Sam Polston was to be married on New-Year's,—but most of all of the Christmas coming out at the old schoolmaster's [changed to: school-master’s]: how the old house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, was fairly glowing with shining paint and hot fires,—how Margaret and her mother worked, in terror lest the old man should find out how poor and bare it was,—how he and Joel had some secret enterprise on foot at the far end of the plantation out in the swamp, and were gone nearly all day.

She ceased coming at last. One of the sisters went out to see her, and told him she was too weak to walk, but meant to be better soon,—quite well by the holidays. He wished the poor thing had told him what she wanted of him,—wished it anxiously, with a dull presentiment of evil.

The days went by, cold and slow. He watched grimly the preparations the hospital physician was silently making in his case, for fever, inflammation.

"I must be strong enough to go out cured on Christmas eve," he said to him one day, coolly.

The old doctor glanced up shrewdly. He was an old Alsatian, very plain-spoken.

"You say so?" he mumbled. "Chut! Then you will go. There are some—bull-dog men. They do what they please,—they never die unless they choose, begar! We know them in our practice, Herr Holmes!"

Holmes laughed. Some acumen there, he thought, in medicine or mind: as for himself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in life had been by no flush of enthusiasm or hope; a dogged persistence of "holding on," rather.

[added: A long time; but] Christmas eve came at last; bright, still, frosty. "Whatever he had to do, let it be done quickly "; but not till the set hour came. So he laid his watch on the table beside him, waiting until it should mark the time he had chosen: the ruling passion of self-control as strong in this turn of life's tide as it would be in its ebb, at the last. The old doctor found him alone in the dreary room, coming in with the frosty breath of the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary and impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "_Ja wohl!—ja wohl_!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latent fever,—the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he would go,—_oui_?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, glück zu!" And so shuffled out latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken bones, the doctor thought,—with no suspicion of the subtile, intolerable passion smouldering in every drop of this man's phlegmatic blood.

Evening came at last. He stopped until the cracked bell of the chapel had done striking the Angelus, and then put on his overcoat, and went out. [added: Passing down the garden walk a miserable chicken staggered up to him, chirping a drunken recognition. For a moment, he breathed again the hot smoke of the mill, remembering how Lois had found him in Margret’s office, not forgetting the cage: chary of this low life, even in the peril of his own. So, going out on the street, he tested his own nature by this trifle in the old fashion. “The ruling passion strong in death,” eh? It had not been self-love; something deeper: an instinct rather than reason. Was he glad to think this of himself? He looked out more watchful of the face which the coming Christmas bore.] The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to some keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the icy pavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was a trading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jolly Christmas face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grown ashamed of their doings, and shut their doors, and covered their windows with frosty trees, and cathedrals, and castles; the shops opened their [added: inmost] hearts; some child's angel had touched them, and they flushed out into a magic splendor [changed to: splendour] of Christmas trees, and lights, and toys; Santa Claus might have made his head-quarters in any one of them. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quite weighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burning their pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you met with a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families, and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling them into candy-stores or toy-shops: all the churches whose rules permitted them to show their deep rejoicing in a simple way had covered their cold stone walls with evergreens and wreaths of glowing fire-berries: the child's angel had touched them too, perhaps,—not unwisely.

He passed crowds of thin-clad women looking in through open doors, with red cheeks and hungry eyes, at red-hot stoves within, and a placard, "Christmas dinners for the poor, gratis"; out of every window on the streets came a ruddy light, and a spicy smell; the very sunset sky had caught the reflection of the countless Christmas fires, and flamed up to the zenith, blood-red as cinnabar.

Holmes turned down one of the back streets: he was going to see Lois, first of all. I hardly know why: the child's angel may have touched him, too; or his heart, full of a yearning pity for the poor cripple, who, he believed now, had given her own life for his, may have plead for indulgence, as men remember their childish prayers, before going into battle. He came at last, in the quiet lane where she lived, to her little brown frame-shanty, to which you mounted by a flight of wooden steps: there were two narrow windows at the top, hung with red curtains; he could hear her feeble voice singing within. As he turned to go up the steps, he caught sight of something crouched underneath them in the dark, hiding from him: whether a man—or a dog he could not see. He touched it.

"I'll not flurr myself," he said, crunching his ragged hat in his hands,—"I'll not."

He drove the hat down upon his head, and looked up with a sullen fierceness.

"Yoh've got me, an' I'm glad of 't. I'm tired, fearin'. I was born for hangin', they say," with a laugh. "But I'll see my girl. I've waited hyur, runnin' the resk,—not darin' to see her, on 'count o' yoh. I thort I was safe on Christmas-day,—but what's Christmas to yoh or me?"

Holmes's quiet motion drove him up the steps before him. He stopped at the top, his cowardly nature getting the better of him, and sat down whining on the upper step.

"Be marciful, Mas'r! I wanted to see my girl,—that's all. She's all I hev."

Holmes passed him and went in. Was Christmas nothing to him? How did this foul wretch know that they stood alone, apart from the world?

It was a low, cheerful little room that he came into, stooping his tall head: a tea-kettle humming and singing on the wood-fire, that lighted up the coarse carpet and the gray walls, but spent its warmest heat on the low settee where Lois lay sewing, and singing to herself. She was wrapped up in a shawl, but the hands, he saw, were worn to skin and bone; the gray shadow was heavier on her face, and the brooding brown eyes were like a tired child's. She tried to jump up when she saw him, and not being able, leaned on one elbow, half-crying as she laughed.

"It's the best Christmas gift of all! I can hardly b'lieve it!"—touching the strong hand humbly that was held out to her.

Holmes had a gentle touch, I told you, for dogs and children and women: so, sitting quietly by her, he listened [added: for a long time] with untiring patience to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles she had patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense of color [changed to: colour] and grace betrayed in the bits of flannel and leather; and took, with a grave look of wonder, his own package, out of which a bit of woollen thread peeped forth.

"Don't look till to-morrow mornin'," she said, anxiously, as she lay back trembling and exhausted.

The breath of the mill! The fires of [added: the world’s] want and crime had finished their work on her life—so! She caught the meaning of his face quickly.

"It's nothin'," she said, eagerly. "I'll be strong by New-Year's; it's only a day or two rest I need. I've no tho't o' givin' up."

And to show how strong she was, she got up and hobbled about to make the tea. He had not the heart to stop her; she did not want to die,—why should she? the world was a great, warm, beautiful nest for the little cripple,—why need he show her the cold without? He saw her at last go near the door where old Yare sat outside, then heard her breathless cry, and a sob. A moment after the old man came into the room, carrying her, and, laying her down on the settee, chafed her hands and misshapen head.

"I care for you, child," said Holmes, stooping suddenly close to the girl's livid face.

"To-morrow?" she muttered. "My Christmas-day?"

He wet her face while he looked over at the wretch whose life he held in his hands. It was the iron rule of Holmes's nature to be just; but to-night dim perceptions of a deeper justice than law opened before him,—problems he had no time to solve: the sternest fortress is liable to be taken by assault,—and the dew of the coming morn was on his heart.

"So as I've hunted fur him!" she whispered, weakly. "I didn't think it wud come to this. So as I loved him! Oh, Mr. Holmes, he's hed a pore chance in livin',—forgive him this! Him that'll come to-morrow'd say to forgive him this."

She caught the old man's head in her arms with an agony of tears, and held it tight.

“No, Lois.” She looked into his eyes bewildered. “For the poor child that loved me’ he said, half to himself, smoothing her hair.

Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of the soul’s life will be bared, this man will know the subtile instincts that drew him out of his self-reliance by the hand of the child that loved him to the Love and beyond, that was man and died for him, as well as she. He did not see it now.]

The clear evening light fell on Holmes, as he stood there looking down at the dying little lamiter: a powerful figure, with a face supreme, masterful, but tender: you will find no higher type of manhood. Did God make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretch crouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed? Some such thought came into Lois's brain, and vexed her, bringing the tears to her eyes: he was her father, you know. [no paragraph break]

[added: She drew their hands together, as if she would have joined them, then stopped, closing her eyes wearily.] "It's all wrong," she muttered,—"oh, it's far wrong! Ther' 's One could make them 'like. Not me."

She stroked her father's head once, and then let it go. [added: There was a long silence.] Holmes glanced out, and saw the sun was down.

"Lois," he said, "I want you to wish me a happy Christmas, as people do."

Holmes had a curious vein of superstition: he knew no lips so pure as this girl's, and he wanted them to wish him good-luck that night. She did it, [added: looking up] laughing and growing red: riddles of life did not trouble her childish fancy long. And so he left her, with a dull feeling, as I said before, that it was good to say a prayer before the battle came on. For men who believed in prayers: for him, it was the same thing to make one day for Lois happier.

[deleted[: * * * * * ; end of February 1862 issue]

A STORY OF TO-DAY. [deleted]

PART VI. [changed to: Chapter X]

It was later than Holmes thought: a gray, cold evening. The streets in that suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met no one: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to go to: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, as he walked slowly along as if waiting for some one,—wondering dully if the gray air were any colder or stiller than the heart hardly beating under the coat. Well, men had conquered Fate, conquered life and love, before now. It grew darker: he was pacing now slowly in the shadow of a long low wall surrounding the grounds of some building. When he came near the gate, he would stop and listen: he could have heard a sparrow on the snow, it was so still. After a while he did hear footsteps, crunching the snow heavily; the gate clicked as they came out: it was Knowles, and the clergyman whom Dr. Cox did not like; Vandyke was his name.

"Don't bolt the gate," said Knowles; "Miss Howth will be out presently."

They sat down on a pile of lumber near by, waiting, apparently. Holmes went up and joined them, standing in the shadow of the lumber, talking to Vandyke. He did not meet him, perhaps, once in six months; but he believed in the man, thoroughly.

"I've just helped Knowles build a Christmas-tree in yonder,—the House of Refuge, you know. He could not tell an oak from an arbor-vitæ, I believe."

Knowles was in no mood for quizzing.

"There are other things I don't know," he said, gloomily, recurring to some subject Holmes had interrupted. "The House is going to the Devil, Charley, headlong."

"There's no use in saying no," said the other; "you'll call me a lying diviner."

Knowles did not listen.

"Seems as if I was [deleted: was; added: were] to go groping and stumbling through the world like some forsaken Cyclops with his eye out, dragging down whatever I touched.[49] If there was [deleted: was; added: were] anything to hold by, anything certain!"

Vandyke looked at him gravely, but did not answer; rose, and walked indolently up and down to keep himself warm. A lithe, slow figure, a clear face with delicate lips, and careless eyes that saw everything: the face of a man quick to learn and slow to teach.

"There she comes!" said Knowles, as the lock of the gate rasped.

Holmes had heard the slow step in the snow long before. A small woman came out and went down the silent street into the road beyond. Holmes kept his back turned to her, lighting his cigar; the other men watched her eagerly.

"What do you think, Vandyke?" demanded Knowles. "How will she do?"

"Do for what?"—resuming his lazy walk. "You talk as if she were a machine. It is the way with modern reformers. Men are so many ploughs and harrows to work on 'the classes.' Do for what?"

Knowles flushed hotly.

"The work the Lord has left for her to do. Do you mean to say there is none to do,—you, pledged to missionary labor [changed to: Missionary labour]?"

The young man's face colored [changed to: coloured].

"I know this street needs paving terribly, Knowles; but I don't see a boulder in your hands. Yet the great Taskmaster does not despise the pavers. He did not give you the spirit and understanding for paving, eh, is that it? How do you know He gave this Margaret Howth the spirit and understanding of a reformer? There may be higher work for her to do."

"Higher!" The old man stood aghast. "I know your creed, then,—that the true work for a man or a woman is that which develops their highest nature?"

Vandyke laughed.

"You have a creed-mania, Knowles. You have a confession of faith ready-made for everybody, but yourself. I only meant for you to take care what you do. That woman looks as the Prodigal Son might have done when he began to be in want, and would fain have fed himself with the husks that the swine did eat."[50]

Knowles got up moodily.

"Whose work is it, then?" he muttered, following the men down the street; for they walked on. "The world has waited six thousand years for help. It comes slowly,—slowly, Vandyke; even through your religion."

The young man did not answer: looked up, with quiet, rapt eyes, through the silent city, and the clear gray beyond. They passed a little church lighted up for evening service: as if to give a meaning to the old man's words, they were chanting the one anthem of the world, the Gloria in Excelsis.[51] Hearing the deep organ-roll, the men stopped outside to listen: it heaved and sobbed through the night, as if bearing up to God the pain and [deleted: pain and] wrong of countless aching hearts, then was silent, and a single voice swept over the moors in a long, lamentable cry:—"Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!"

The men stood silent, until the hush was broken by a low murmur:—"For Thou only art holy." Holmes had taken off his hat, unconscious that he did it; he put it on slowly, and walked on. What was it that Knowles had said to him once about mean and selfish taints on his divine soul? "For Thou only art holy": if there were truth in that!

"How quiet it is!" he said, as they stopped to leave him. It was,—a breathless quiet; the great streets of the town behind them were shrouded in snow; the hills, the moors, the prairie swept off into the skyless dark, a gray and motionless sea lit by a low watery moon. "The very earth listens," he said.

"Listens for what?" said the literal old Doctor.

"I think it listens always," said Vandyke, his eye on fire. "For its King—that shall be. Not as He came before. It has not long to wait now: the New Year is not far off."

"I've no faith in folding [changed to: holding] your hands, waiting for it; nor have you either, Charley," growled Knowles. "There's an infernal lot of work to be done before it comes, I fancy. Here, let me light my cigar."

Holmes bade them good-night, laughing, and struck into the by-road through the hills. He shook hands with Vandyke before he went,—a thing he scarce ever did with anybody. Knowles noticed it, and, after he was out of hearing, mumbled out some sarcasm at "a minister of the gospel consorting with a cold, silent scoundrel like that!" Vandyke listened to his scolding in his usual lazy way, and they went back into town.

The road Holmes took was rutted deep with wagon-wheels, not easily travelled; he walked slowly therefore, being weak, stopping now and then to gather strength. He had not counted the hours until this day, to be balked now by a little loss of blood. The moon was nearly down before he reached the Cloughton hills: he turned there into a narrow path which he remembered well. Now and then he saw the mark of a little shoe in the snow,—looking down at it with a hot panting in his veins and a strange flash in his eye, as he walked on steadily.

There was a turn in the path at the top of the hill, a sunken wall, with a broad stone from which the wind had blown the snow. This was the place. He sat down on the stone, resting. Just there she had stood, clutching her little fingers behind her, when he came up and threw back her hood to look in her face: how pale and worn it was, even then! He had not looked at her to-night: he would not, if he had been dying, with those men standing there. He stood alone in the world with this little Margaret. How those men had carped, and criticized [changed to: criticised] her, chattered of the duties of her soul! Why, it was his, it was his own, softer and fresher. There was not a glance with which they followed the weak little body in its poor dress that he had not seen, and savagely resented. They measured her strength? counted how long the bones and blood would last in their House of Refuge? There was not a morsel of her flesh that was not pure and holy in his eyes. His Margaret? He chafed with an intolerable fever to make her his, but for one instant, as she had been once. Now, when it was too late. For he went back over every word he had spoken that night, forcing himself to go through with it,—every cold, poisoned word. It was a fitting penance. "There is no such thing as love in real life": he had told her that! How he had stood, with all the power of his "divine soul" in his will, and told her,—he,—a man,—that he put away her love from him then, forever! He spared himself nothing,--slurred over nothing; spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, the niggardly selfishness [deleted: the niggardly selfishness] in which he had wallowed that night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!—pluming himself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as one might hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, and trampled it under his feet, coldly and quietly! She was in his way, and he had put her aside. How the fine subtile spirit had risen up out of its agony of shame, and scorned him! How it had flashed from the puny frame [changed to: flame] standing there in the muddy road despised and jeered at, and calmly judged him! He might go from her as he would, toss her off like a worn-out plaything, but he could not blind her: let him put on what face he would to the world, whether they called him a master among men, or a miser, or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, a scoundrel, this girl laid her little hand on his soul with an utter recognition: she alone. "She knew him for a better man than he knew himself that night": he remembered the words.

The night was growing murky and bitingly cold: there was no prospect on the snow-covered hills, or the rough road at his feet with its pools of ice-water, to bring content into his face, or the dewy light into his eyes; but they came there, slowly, while he sat thinking. Some old thought was stealing into his brain, perhaps, fresh and warm, like a soft spring air,—some hope of the future, in which this child-woman came close to him and near. It was an idle dream, only would taunt him when it was over, but he opened his arms to it: it was an old friend; it had made him once a purer and better man than he could ever be again. A warm, happy dream, whatever it may have been: the rugged, sinister face grew calm and sad, as the faces of the dead change when loving tears fall on them. [paragraph break added here]He sighed wearily: the homely little hope was fanning into life stagnant depths of desire and purpose, stirring his resolute ambition. [no paragraph break here]

Too late? Was it too late? Living or dead she was his, though he should never see her face, by some subtile power that had made them one, he knew not when nor how. He did not reason now,—abandoned himself, as morbid men only do, to this delirious hope, simple and bonny, [deleted: , simple and bonny,] of a home, and cheerful warmth, and this woman's love fresh and eternal: a pleasant dream at first, to be put away at pleasure. But it grew bolder, touched under-deeps in his nature of longing and intense passion; all that he knew or felt of power or will, of craving effort, of success in the world, drifted into this dream and became one with it. He stood up, his vigorous frame starting into a nobler manhood, with the consciousness of right,—with a willed assurance, that, the first victory gained, the others should follow.

It was late; he must go on; he had not meant to sit idling by the road-side. He went through the fields, his heavy step crushing the snow, a dry heat in his blood, his eye intent, still, until he came within sight of the farm-house; then he went on, cool and grave, in his ordinary port.

The house was quite dark; only a light in one of the lower windows,—the library, he thought. The broad field he was crossing sloped down to the house, so that, as he came nearer, he saw the little room quite plainly in the red glow of the fire within, the curtains being undrawn. He had a keen eye; did not fail to see the marks of poverty about the place, the gateless fences, even the bare room with its worn and patched carpet: noted it all with a triumphant gleam of satisfaction. There was a black shadow passing and repassing the windows: he waited a moment looking at it, then came more slowly towards them, intenser heats smouldering in his face. He would not surprise her; she should be as ready as he was for the meeting. If she ever put her pure hand in his again, it should be freely done, and of her own good-will.

She saw him as he came up on the porch, and stopped, looking out, as if bewildered,—then resumed her walk, mechanically. What it cost her to see him again he could not tell: her face did not alter. It was lifeless and schooled, the eyes looking straight forward always, indifferently. Was this his work? If he had killed her outright, it would have been better than this.

The windows were low: it had been his old habit to go in through them, and he now went up to one unconsciously. As he opened it, he saw her turn away for an instant; then she waited for him, entirely tranquil, the clear fire shedding a still glow over the room, no cry or shiver of pain to show how his coming broke open the old wound. She smiled even, when he leaned against the window looking, [deleted: looking] with a careless welcome.

Holmes stopped, confounded. It did not suit him,—this. If you know a man's nature, you comprehend why. The bitterest reproach or a proud contempt would have been less galling than this gentle indifference. His hold had slipped from off the woman, he believed. A moment before he had remembered how he had held her in his arms, touched her cold lips, and then flung her off,—he had remembered it, his [deleted: his] every nerve shrinking with remorse and unutterable tenderness: now—! The utter quiet of her face told more than words could do. She did not love him; he was nothing to her. Then love was a lie. A moment before he could have humbled himself in her eyes as low as he lay in his own, and accepted her pardon as a necessity of her enduring, faithful nature: now the whole strength of the man sprang into rage and mad desire of conquest.

He came gravely across the room, holding out his hand with his old quiet control. She might be cold and grave as he, but underneath he knew there was a thwarted hungry spirit,—a strong fine spirit as dainty Ariel.[52] He would sting it to life, and tame it: it was his.

"I thought you would come, Stephen," she said, simply, motioning him to a chair.

Could this automaton be Margaret? He leaned on the mantel-shelf, looking down with a cynical sneer.

"Is that the welcome? Why, there are a thousand greetings for this time of love and good words you might have chosen. Besides, I have come back ill and poor,—a beggar perhaps. How do women receive such,—generous women? Is there no formula [deleted: formula; added: etiquette]? no hand-shaking? nothing more? remembering that I was once--not indifferent to you."

He laughed. She stood still and grave as before.

"Why, Margaret, I have been down near death since that night."

He thought her lips grew gray, but she looked up clear and steady.

"I am glad you did not die. Yes, I can say that. As for hand-shaking, my ideas may be peculiar as your own."

"She measures her words," he said, as to himself; "her very eye-light is ruled by decorum; she is a machine, for work. She has swept her child's heart clean of anger and revenge, even scorn for the wretch that sold himself for money. There was nothing else to sweep out, was there?"—bitterly,—"no friendships, such as weak women nurse and coddle into being,—or love, that they live in, and die for sometimes, in a silly way?"

"Unmanly!"

"No, not unmanly. Margaret, let us be serious and calm. It is no time to trifle or wear masks. That has passed between us which leaves no room for sham courtesies."

"There needs none,"—meeting his eye unflinchingly. "I am ready to meet you and hear your farewell [deleted: farewell; added: good-bye]. Dr. Knowles told me your marriage was near at hand. I knew you would come, Stephen. You did before."

He winced,—the more that her voice was so clear of pain.

"Why should I come? To show you what sort of a heart I have sold for money? Why, [added: you think] you know, little Margaret. You can reckon up its deformity, its worthlessness, on your cool fingers. You could tell the serene and gracious lady who is chaffering for it what a bargain she has made,—that there is not in it one spark of manly honor [changed to: honour] or true love. Don't venture too near it in your coldness and prudence. It has tiger passions I will not answer for. Give me your hand, and feel how it pants like a hungry fiend. It will have food, Margaret."

She drew away the hand he grasped, and stood back in the shadow.

"What is it to me?"—in the same measured voice.

Holmes wiped the cold drops from his forehead, a sort of shudder in his powerful frame. He stood a moment looking into the fire, his head dropped on his arm.

"Let it be so," he said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no mind to whimper over pain."

Something that she saw on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood breaking the dead silence of the room.

"It does not matter," he said, raising his head, laying his arm over his strong chest unconsciously, as if to shut in all complaint. "I had an idle fancy that it would be good on this Christmas night to bare the secrets of crime and selfishness [deleted: of crime and selfishness] hidden in here to you,—to suffer your pure eyes to probe the sorest depths: I thought perhaps they would have a blessing power. It was an idle fancy. What is my want or crime to you?"

The answer came slowly, but it did come.

"Nothing to me."

She tried to meet the gaunt face looking down on her with a [deleted: a; added: its] proud sadness,—did meet it at last with her meek eyes.

"No, nothing to you. There is no need that I should stay longer, is there? You made ready to meet me, and have gone through your part well."

"It is no part. I speak God's truth to you as I can."

"I know. There is nothing more for us to say to each other In [changed to: in] this world, then, except good-night. Words—polite words— are bitterer than death, sometimes. If ever we happen to meet, that courteous smile on your face will be enough to speak—God's truth for you. Shall we say good-night now?"

"If you will."

She drew farther into the shadow, leaning on a chair.

He stopped, some sudden thought striking him.

"I have a whim," he said, dreamily, "that I would like to satisfy. It would be a trifle to you: will you grant it?—for the sake of some old happy day, long ago?"

She put her hand up to her throat; then it fell again.

"Anything you wish, Stephen," she said, gravely.

"Yes. Come nearer, then, and let me see what I have lost. A heart so cold and strong as yours need not fear inspection. I have a fancy to look into it, for the last time."

She stood motionless and silent.

"Come,"—softly,—"there is no hurt in your heart that fears detection?"

She came out into the full light, and stood before him, pushing back the hair from her forehead, that he might see every wrinkle, and the faded, lifeless eyes. It was a true woman's motion, remembering even then to scorn deception. The light glowed brightly in her face, as the slow minutes ebbed without a sound: she only saw his face in shadow, with the fitful gleam of intolerable meaning in his eyes. Her own quailed and fell.

"Does it hurt you that I should even look at you?" he said, drawing back. "Why, even the sainted dead suffer us to come near them after they have died to us,—to touch their hands, to kiss their lips, to find what look they left in their faces for us. Be patient, for the sake of the old time. My whim is not satisfied yet."

"I am patient."

"Tell me something of yourself, to take with me when I go, for the last time. Shall I think of you as happy in these days?"

"I am contented,"—the words oozing from her white lips in the bitterness of truth. "I asked God, that night, to show me my work; and I think He has shown it to me. I do not complain. It is a great work."

"Is that all?" he demanded, fiercely.

"No, not all. It pleases me to feel I have a warm home, and to help keep it cheerful. When my father kisses me at night, or my mother says, 'God bless you, child,' I know that is enough, that I ought to be happy."

The old clock in the corner hummed and ticked through the deep silence like the humble voice of the home she toiled to keep warm, thanking her, comforting her.

"Once more," as the light grew stronger on her face,—"will you look down into your heart that you have given to this great work, and tell me what you see there? Dare you do it, Margaret?"

"I dare do it,"—but her whisper was husky.

"Go on."

He watched her more as a judge would a criminal, as she sat before him: she struggled weakly under the power of his eye, not meeting it. He waited relentless, seeing her face slowly whiten, her limbs shiver, her bosom heave.

"Let me speak for you," he said at last. "I know who once filled your heart to the exclusion of all others: it is no time for mock shame. I know it was my hand that held the very secret of your being. Whatever I may have been, you loved me, Margaret. Will you say that now?"

"I loved you,—once."

Whether it were truth that nerved her, or self-delusion, she was strong now to utter it all.

"You love me no longer, then?"

"I love you no longer."

She did not look at him; she was conscious only of the hot fire wearing her eyes, and the vexing click of the clock. After a while he bent over her silently,—a manly, tender presence.

"When love goes once," he said, "it never returns. Did you say it was gone, Margaret?"

One effort more, and Duty would be satisfied.

"It is gone."

In the slow darkness that came to her she covered her face, knowing and hearing nothing. When she looked up, Holmes was standing by the window, with his face toward the gray fields. It was a long time before he turned and came to her.

"You have spoken honestly: it is an old fashion of yours. You believed what you said. Let me also tell you what you call God's truth, for a moment, Margaret. It will not do you harm."—He spoke gravely, solemnly.—"When you loved me long ago, selfish, erring as I was, you fulfilled the law of your nature; when you put that love out of your heart, you make your duty a tawdry sham, and your life a lie. Listen to me. I am calm."

Was he calm? [deleted: Was he calm?]It was calmness that made her tremble as she had not done before. [deleted: . ; added: , with a strange suspicion of the truth flashing on her. That she, casing herself in her pride, her conscious righteousness, hugging her new-found philanthropy close, had sunk to a depth of niggardly selfishness, of which this man knew nothing. Nobler than she; half angry as she felt that, sitting at his feet, looking up. He knew it, too; the grave judging voice told it; he had taken his rightful place. Just, as only a man can be, in his judgment of himself and her: her love that she had prided herself with, seemed weak and drifting, brought into contact with this cool integrity of meaning. I think she was glad to be humbled before him. Women have strange fancies, sometimes.]

"You have deceived yourself [added: ,” he said: “]when you try to fill your heart with this work, you serve neither your God nor your fellow-man. You tell me," stooping close to her, "that I am nothing to you: you believe it, poor child! There is not a line on your face that does not prove it false. I have keen eyes, Margaret!"—He laughed,—a savage, despairing laugh.—[ deleted:— a savage, despairing laugh.—] "You have wrung this love out of your heart? If it was [deleted: was; added: were] easy to do, did it need to wring with it every sparkle of pleasure and grace out of your life? Your very hair is gathered out of your sight: you feared to remember how my hand had touched it? Your dress is stingy and hard; your step, your eyes, your mouth under rule. So hard it was to force yourself into an old worn-out woman! Oh, Margaret! Margaret!"

She moaned under her breath.

"I notice trifles, child! Yonder, in that corner, used to stand the desk where I helped you with your Latin. How you hated it! Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"It always stood there: it is gone now. Outside of the gate there was that elm I planted, and you promised to water while I was gone. It is cut down now by the roots."

"I had it done, Stephen."

"I know. Do you know why? Because you love me: because you do not dare to think of me, you dare not trust yourself to look at the tree that I had planted."

She started up with a cry, and stood there in the old way, her fingers catching at each other.

"It is cruel,—let me go!"

"It is not cruel."—He came up closer to her.—"You think you do not love me, and see what I have made you! Look at the torpor of this face,—the dead, frozen eyes! It is a 'nightmare, death in life,' Good God, to think that I have done this! To think of the countless days of agony, the nights, the years of solitude that have brought her to this,—little Margaret!"

He paced the floor, slowly. She sat down on a low stool, leaning her head on her hands. The little figure, the bent head, the quivering chin brought up her childhood to him. She used to sit so when he had tormented her, waiting to be coaxed back to love and smiles again. The hard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it. He watched the deep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her to death,—his bonny Margaret! She was like a dead thing now: what need to torture her longer? Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life, taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company. He rose uncertainly,—then came to her: was that the way to leave her?

"I am going, Margaret," he whispered, "but let me tell you a story before I go,—a Christmas story, say. It will not touch you,—it is too late to hope for that,—but it is right that you should hear it."

She looked up wearily.

"As you will, Stephen."

Whatever impulse drove the man to speak words that he knew were useless made him stand back from her, as though she were something he was unfit to touch: the words dragged from him slowly.

"I had a curious dream to-night, Margaret,—a waking dream: only a clear vision of what had been once. Do you remember—the old time?"

What disconnected rambling was this? Yet the girl understood it, looked into the low fire with sad, listening eyes.

"Long ago. That was a free, strong life that opened before us then, little one,—before you and me? Do you remember the Christmas before I went away? I had a strong arm and a hungry brain to go out into the world with, then. Something better, too, I had. A purer self than was born with me came late in life, and nestled in my heart. Margaret, there was no fresh loving thought in my brain for God or man that did not grow from my love of you; there was nothing noble or kindly in my nature that did not flow into that love and deepen there. I was your master, too. I held my own soul by no diviner right than I held your love and owed you mine. I understand it, now, when it is too late."—He wiped the cold drops from his face.—"Now do you know whether it is remorse I feel, when I think how I put this purer self away,—how I went out triumphant in my inhuman, greedy soul, [deleted: soul; added: brain]—how I resolved to know, to be, to trample under foot all weak love or homely pleasures? I have been punished. Let those years go. I think, sometimes, I came near to the nature of the damned who dare not love: I would not. It was then I hurt you, Margaret,—to the death: your true life lay in me, as mine in you."

He had gone on drearily, as though holding colloquy with himself, as though great years of meaning surged up and filled the broken words. It may have been thus with the girl, for her face deepened as she listened. For the first time for many long days tears welled up into her eyes, and rolled between her fingers unheeded.

"I came through the streets to-night baffled in life,—a mean man that might have been noble,--all the years wasted that had gone before,—disappointed,—with nothing to hope for but time to work humbly and atone for the wrongs I had done. When I lay yonder, my soul on the coast of eternity, I resolved to atone for every selfish deed. I had no thought of happiness; God knows I had no hope of it. I had wronged you most: I could not die with that wrong unforgiven."

"Unforgiven, Stephen?" she sobbed; "I forgave it long ago."

He looked at her a moment, then by some master effort choked down the word he would have spoken, and went on with his bitter confession.

"I came through the crowded town, a homeless, solitary man, on the Christmas eve when love comes to every man. If ever I had grown sick for a word or touch from the one soul to whom alone mine was open, I thirsted for it then. The better part of my nature was crushed out, and flung away with you, Margaret. I cried for it,—I wanted help to be a better, purer man. I need it now. And so," he said, with a smile that hurt her more than tears, "I came to my good angel, to tell her I had sinned and repented, that I had made humble plans for the future, and ask her—God knows what I would have asked her then! She had forgotten me,—she had another work to do!"

She wrung her hands with a helpless cry. Holmes went to the window: the dull waste of snow looked to him as hopeless and vague as his own life.

"I have deserved it," he muttered to himself. "It is too late to amend."

Some light touch thrilled his arm.

"Is it too late, Stephen?" whispered a childish voice.

The strong man trembled, looking at the little dark figure standing near him.

"We were both wrong; [added: I have been untrue, selfish. More than you. Stephen, help me to be a better girl;] let us be friends again."

She went back unconsciously to the old words of their quarrels long ago. He drew back.

"Do not mock me," he gasped. "I suffer, Margaret. Do not mock me with more courtesy."

"I do not; let us be friends again."

She was crying like a penitent child; her face was turned away; love, pure and deep, was in her eyes.

The red fire-light grew stronger; the clock hushed its noisy ticking to hear the story. Holmes's pale lip worked: what was this coming to him? He dared not hope, yet [deleted: He dared not hope, yet] his [changed to: His] breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his veins, his deep eyes flashed fire.

"If my little friend comes to me," he said, in a smothered voice, "there is but one place for her,—her soul with my soul, her heart on my heart."—He opened his arms.—"She must rest her head here. My little friend must be—my wife."[53]

She looked into the strong, haggard face,—a smile crept out on her own, arch and debonair like that of old time.

"I am tired, Stephen," she whispered, and softly laid her head down on his breast.

The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room, about the two figures standing motionless there,—shimmered down into awe-struck shadow: who heeded it? The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the house: nothing else broke the silence. Without, the deep night paused, gray, impenetrable. Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas morn? A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy. Down there in the farm-window two human hearts had given the joy a name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touching each other beat in a slow, full chord of love as pure in God's eyes as the song the angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that is to come. Forever and ever,—not even death would part them; he knew that, holding her closer, looking down into her face.

What a pale little face it was! [changed to: ?]Through the intensest heat of his passion the sting touched him: it was but one mark of his murderous selfishness [deleted: it was but one mark of his murderous selfishness]. Some instinct made her glance up at him, as he thought this, [deleted; , as he thought this,] with a keen insight, and she [deleted: and she; added: seeing the morbid gloom that was the man’s sin, in his face. She] lifted her head from his breast, and when he stooped to touch her lips, shook herself free, laughing carelessly. Their whole life was before them to taste happiness, and she had a mind they should taste it drop by drop. [deleted: Their whole life was before them to taste happiness, and she had a mind they should taste it drop by drop.] Alas, Stephen Holmes! you will have little time for morbid questionings in those years to come: [added: her cheerful work has begun: no more self-devouring reveries:] your very pauses of silent content and love will be rare and well-earned. No more tranced raptures for to-night,—let tomorrow bring what it would.

"[added: Yes, stop.] That is right, Stephen. Remorse grows maudlin when it goes into words," laughing again at his astounded look.

He took her hand,—a dewy, healthy hand,—the very touch of it meant action and life.

"What if I say, then," he said, earnestly, "that I do not find my angel perfect, be the fault mine or hers? The child Margaret, with her sudden tears and laughter and angry heats, is gone,—I killed her, I think,—gone long ago. I will not take in place of her this worn, pale ghost, who wears clothes as chilly as if she came from the dead, and stands alone, as ghosts do."

She stood a little way off, her great brown eyes flashing with tears. It was so strange a joy to find herself cared for, when she had believed she was old and hard: the very idle jesting made her youth and happiness real to her. Holmes saw that with his quick tact. He flung playfully a crimson shawl that lay there about her white neck.

"My wife must suffer her life to flush out in gleams of color [changed to: colour] and light: her cheeks must hint at a glow within, as yours do now. I will have no hard angles, no pallor, no uncertain memory of pain in her life: it shall be perpetual summer."

He loosened her hair, and it rolled down about the bright, tearful face, shining in the red fire-light like a mist of tawny gold.

"I need warmth and freshness and light: my wife shall bring them to me. She shall be no strong-willed reformer, standing alone: a sovereign lady with kind words for the world, who gives her hand only to that man whom she trusts, and keeps her heart and its secrets for me alone."

She paid no heed to him other than by a deepening color; the clock, however, grew tired of the long soliloquy, and broke in with an asthmatic warning as to the time of night.

When he was gone, she knelt down by her window, remembering that night long ago,—free to sob and weep out her joy,—very sure that her Master had not forgotten to hear even a woman's prayer, and to give her her true work,—very sure,—never to doubt again. There was a dark, sturdy figure pacing up and down the road, that she did not see. It was there when the night was over and morning began to dawn. Christmas morning! he remembered,—it was something to him now! Never again a homeless, solitary man! You would think the man weak, if I were to tell you how this word "home" had taken possession of him,—how he had planned out work through the long night: success to come, but with his wife nearest his heart, and the homely farm-house and the old schoolmaster in the centre of the picture. Such an humble castle in the air! Christmas morning was surely something to him. Yet, as the night passed, he went back to the years that had been wasted, with an unavailing bitterness. He would not turn from the truth, that, with his strength of body and brain to command happiness and growth, his life had been a failure. I think it was first on that night that the story of the despised Nazarene came to him with a new meaning,—One who came to gather up these broken fragments of lives and save them with His own. But vaguely, though: Christmas-day as yet was to him the day when love came into the world. He knew the meaning of that. So he watched with an eagerness new to him the day breaking. He could see Margaret's window, and a dim light in it: she would be awake, praying for him, no doubt. He pondered on that. Would you think Holmes weak, if he forsook the faith of Fichte, sometime, led by a woman's hand?[54] Think of the apostle of the positive philosophers, and say no more. He could see a flickering light at dawn crossing the hall: he remembered the old schoolmaster's habit well,—calling "Happy Christmas" at every door: he meant to go down there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagining how the old man would wring his hands, with a "Holla! you're welcome home, Stephen, boy!" and Mrs. Howth would bring out the jars of pine-apple preserve which her sister sent her every year from the West Indies. And then—Never mind what then. Stephen Holmes was very much in love, and this Christmas-day had much to bring him. Yet it was with a solemn shadow on his face that he watched the dawn, showing that he grasped the awful meaning of this day that "brought love into the world." Through the clear, frosty night he could hear a low chime of distant bells shiver the air, hurrying faint and far to tell the glad tidings. He fancied that the dawn flushed warm to hear the story,—that the very earth should rejoice in its frozen depths, if it were true. If it were true!—if this passion in his heart were but a part of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths the world struggled vainly!—if it were true that this Christ did come to make that love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the old schoolmaster's joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in even poor Lois's thorough content in this day,—for it would be, he knew, a thrice-happy day to her. A strange story that of the Child coming into the world,—simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, gray eyes, how all the fresh morning told it,—it was in the very air; thinking how its echo stole through the whole world,—how innumerable children's voices told it in eager laughter,—how even the lowest slave half-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that Christ was born. He could hear from the church on the hill that they were singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to him? Did [added: not] he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was born this day? There is no smile on his face as he listens to the words, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men"; it bends lower,—lower only. But in the selfish [deleted: the selfish; added: his soul-lit] eyes there are warm tears, and on his worn face a sad and solemn joy.

* * * * * [deleted * * * *]

[Added: Chapter XI]

I am going to end my story now, There are phases more vivid in the commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love as poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; you will find colors [changed to: colours] enough in your own house and heart.

As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to that theme: how the old schoolmaster went about, bustling, his thin face quite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, "God bless my soul!"—hardly recovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting for him when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led by him, and nobody else, all day, and before half an hour had confided, under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book about Bertrand de Born;[55] how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitable Virginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest,—settling into more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success was surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and went off on some mysterious errand, having "other chores to do than idling and duddering"; how the day rose into a climax of perfection at dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind,—the turkey being done to a delicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a Christian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr. Knowles, who brought a great bouquet out for the schoolmaster, was in an unwonted good-humor [changed to: humour]; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little in dread, enjoyed it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all, but Margaret. They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite fretted the old lady; indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out in the pantry, until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way all day, however.

Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected the worst, under all his good-humor. It was a bitter disappointment to give up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an uncouth fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning; but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented. Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to. All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the House of Refuge,"—which she put down to the account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands.

Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at the farm-houses on the road. Margaret had arranged a settle for the sick girl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her.

As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: Dickens himself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented.[56] The old schoolmaster and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do the perpetual honors [changed to: honours] of a baronial castle; so you may know how the little room and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened. Even Knowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all, recalling the chicken in the mill, and,—[ Paragraph break deleted]

"Well, it was better to think well of all men, poor devils!"

I am sorry to say there was a short thunder-storm in the very midst of the dinner. Knowles and Mr. Howth, in their anxiety to keep off from ancient subjects of dispute, came, for a wonder, on modern politics, and of course there was a terrible collision, which made Mrs. Howth quite breathless: it was over in a minute, however, and it was hard to tell which was the most repentant. Knowles, as you know, was a disciple of Garrison, and the old schoolmaster was (will the "Atlantic" bear it?) [deleted: (will the “Atlantic” bear it?] a States'-rights man, as you might expect from his antecedents,—suspected, indeed, of being a contributor to "De Bow's Review."[57] I may as well come out with the whole truth, and acknowledge that at the present writing the old gentleman is the very hottest Secessionist I know. If it hurts the type, write it down a vice of blood, O printers of New England!—or else, like Uncle Toby's recording angel, drop a tear upon the word, and blot it out forever.[58] [deleted: --or else like Uncle Toby’s recording angel, drop a tear upon the word, and blot it out forever.]

The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then Knowles went back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as it grew dusk, Lois started, knowing how many would come into her little shanty in the evening to wish her Happy Christmas, although it was over. They piled up comforts and blankets in the cart, and she lay on them quite snugly, her scarred child's-face looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs. Howth gave her. Old Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand, looking as if he deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness they all showed his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift, and he took it, eagerly enough. For some unexpressed reason, they stood a long time in the snow bidding Lois good-bye; and for the same reason, it may be, she was loath to go, looking at each one earnestly as she laughed and grew red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs. Howth's hand when she gave it to her. When the cart did drive away, she watched them standing there until she was out of sight, and waved her scrap of a handkerchief; and when the road turned down the hill, lay down and softly cried to herself.

Now that they were alone they gathered close about the fire, while the day without grew gray and colder,—Margaret in her old place by her father's knee. Some dim instinct had troubled the old man all day; it did now: whenever Margaret spoke, he listened eagerly, and forgot to answer sometimes, he was so lost in thought. At last he put his hand on her head, and whispered, "What ails my little girl?" And then his little girl sobbed and cried, as she had been ready to do all day, and kissed his trembling hand, and went and hid on her mother's neck, and left Stephen to say everything for her. And I think you and I had better come away. Are not these things written on the fairest page of Stephen Holmes's remembrance? [deleted: Are not these things written on the fairest page of Stephen Holmes’s remembrance?]

It was quite dark before they had done talking,—quite dark; the wood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea stood till it grew cold, and no one drank it. The old man got up at last, and Holmes led him to the library, where he smoked every evening. He held Maggie, as he called her, in his arms a long time, and wrung Holmes's hand. "God bless you, Stephen!" he said,—"this is a very happy Christmas-day to me." And yet, sitting alone, the tears ran over his wrinkled face as he smoked; and when his pipe went out, he did not know it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the shock, went upstairs, and stayed there a long time. When she came down, the old lady's blue eyes were tenderer, if that were possible, and her face very pale. She went into the library and asked her husband if she didn't prophesy this two years ago, and he said she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered the barbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty years ago. She blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had heard Joel's horse clattering up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be a relief.

If Mrs. Howth's nerves had been weak, she might have supposed that free-born serving-man seized with sudden insanity, from the sight that met her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on the dresser, was flung contemptuously on the ashes; a horrible cloud of burning grease rushed from a dirty pint-pot on the table, and before this Joel was capering and snorting like some red-headed Hottentot before his fetich, occasionally sticking his fingers into the nauseous stuff, and snuffing it up as if it were roses. He was a church-member: he could not be drunk? At the sight of her, he tried to regain the austere dignity usual to him when women were concerned, but lapsed into an occasional giggle, which spoiled the effect.

"Where have you been," she inquired, severely, "scouring the country like a heathen on this blessed day? And what is that you have burning? You're disgracing the house, and strangers in it."

Which he did, accordingly,—shutting himself up in the smoke-house, and burning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, giving up the entire night to his diabolical orgies.

Mrs. Howth did not tell the master, for one reason: it took a long time for so stupendous an idea to penetrate the good lady's brain; and for another: her motherly heart was touched by another story than this Aladdin's lamp of Joel's wherein burned petroleum. She watched from her window until she saw Holmes crossing the icy road: there was a little bitterness, I confess, in the thought that he had taken her child from her; but the prayer that rose for them both took her whole woman's heart with it, and surely will be answered. [deleted: , and surely will be answered]

The road was rough over the hills; the wind that struck Holmes's face bitingly keen: perhaps the life coming for him would be as cold a struggle, having not only poverty to conquer, but himself. But he is a strong man,—no stronger puts his foot down with cool, resolute tread; and to-night there is a thrill on his lips that never rested there before,—a kiss, dewy and warm. Something, [added: some new belief,] too, stirs in his heart, like a subtile atom of pure fire, that he hugs closely,—his for all time. No poverty or death shall ever drive it away. Perhaps he entertains an angel unaware.

After that night Lois never left her little shanty. The days that followed were like one long Christmas; for her poor neighbors, black and white, had some plot among themselves, and worked zealously to make them seem so to her. It was easy to make these last days happy for the simple little soul who had always gathered up every fragment of pleasure in her featureless life, and made much of it, and rejoiced over it. She grew bewildered, sometimes, lying on her wooden settle by the fire; people had always been friendly, taken care of her, but now they were eager in their kindness, as though the time were short. She did not understand the reason, at first; she did not want to die: yet if it hurt her, when it grew clear at last, no one knew it; it was not her way to speak of pain. Only, as she grew weaker, day by day, she began to set her house in order, as one might say, in a quaint, almost comical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to her treasures of colored bottles and needlework's, mending her father's clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day, and left it, thinking she would like to look at it; Knowles called it trash, when he came.[59] The Doctor came always in the morning; he told her he would read to her one day, and did it always afterwards, putting on his horn spectacles, and holding her old Bible close up to his rugged, anxious face. He used to read most from the Gospel of St. John. She liked better to hear him than any of the others, even than Margaret, whose voice was so low and tender: something in the man's half-savage nature was akin to the child's.

As the day drew near when she was to go, every pleasant trifle seemed to gather a deeper, solemn meaning. Jenny Balls came in one night, and old Mrs. Polston.

"We thought you'd like to see her weddin'-dress, Lois," said the old woman, taking off Jenny's cloak, "seein' as the weddin' was to hev been to-morrow, and was put off on 'count of you."

Lois did like to see it; sat up, her face quite flushed to see how nicely it fitted, and stroked back Jenny's soft hair under the veil. And Jenny, being a warm-hearted little thing, broke into a sobbing fit, saying that it spoiled it all to have Lois gone.

"Don't muss your veil, child," said Mrs. Polston.

But Jenny cried on, hiding her face in Lois's skinny hand, until Sam Polston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girl lay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with her blue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam's face, when it turned to her. A different love from any she had known: better, she thought. It could not be helped; but it was better.

After they were gone, she lay a long time quiet, with her hand over her eyes. Forgive her! she, too, was a woman. Ah, it may be there are more wrongs that shall be righted yonder in the To-Morrow than are set down in your theology!

And so it was, that, as she drew nearer to this To-Morrow, the brain of the girl grew clearer,—struggling, one would think, to shake off whatever weight had been put on it by blood or vice or poverty, and become itself again. Perhaps, even in her cheerful, patient life, there had been hours when she had known the wrongs that had been done her, known how cruelly the world had thwarted her; her very keen insight into whatever was beautiful or helpful may have made her see her own mischance, the blank she had drawn in life, more bitterly. She did not see it bitterly now. Death is honest; all things grew clear to her, going down into the valley of the shadow; so, wakening to the consciousness of stifled powers and ungiven happiness, she saw that the fault was not hers, nor His who had appointed her lot; He had helped her to bear it,—bearing worse himself. She did not say once, "I might have been," but day by day, more surely, "I shall be." There was not a tear in [deleted: in; added: on] the homely faces turning from her bed, not a tint of color [changed to: colour] in the flowers they brought her, not a shiver of light in the ashy sky, that did not make her more sure of that which was to come. More loving she grew, as she went away from them, the touch of her hand more pitiful, her voice more tender, if such a thing could be,—with a look in her eyes never seen there before. Old Yare pointed it out to Mrs. Polston one day.

"My girl's far off frum us," he said, sobbing in the kitchen,—"my girl's far off now."

It was the last night of the year that she died. She was so much better that they all were quite cheerful. Kitts went away as it grew dark, and she bade him wrap up his throat with such a motherly dogmatism that they all laughed at her; she, too, with the rest.

"I'll make you a New-Year's call," he said, going out; and she called out that she should be sure to expect him.

She seemed so strong that Holmes and Mrs. Polston and Margaret, who were there, were going home; besides, old Yare said, "I'd like to take care o' my girl alone to-night, ef yoh'd let me,"—for they had not trusted him before. But Lois asked them not to go until the Old Year was over; so they waited downstairs.

The old man fell asleep, and it was near midnight when he wakened with a cold touch on his hand.

"It's come, father!"

He started up with a cry, looking at the new smile in her eyes, grown strangely still.

"Call them all, quick, father!"

Whatever was the mystery of death that met her now, her heart clung to the old love that had been true to her so long.

It was a bitter disappointment, but she roused herself even then to smile, and tell him yes, cheerfully. You call it a trifle, nothing? It may be; yet I think the angels looking down had tears in their eyes, when they saw the last trial of the unselfish, solitary heart, and kept for her a different crown from his who conquers a city.

The fire-light grew warmer and redder; her eyes followed it, as if all that had been bright and kindly in her life were coming back in it. She put her hand on her father, trying vainly to smooth his gray hair. The old man's heart smote him for something, for his sobs grew louder, and he left her a moment; then she saw them all, faces very dear to her even then. She laughed and nodded to them all in the old childish way; then her lips moved. "It's come right!" she tried to say; but the weak voice would never speak again on earth.

"It's the turn o' the night," said Mrs. Polston, solemnly; "lift her head; the Old Year's goin' out."

Margaret lifted her head, and held it on her breast. She could hear cries and sobs; the faces, white now, and wet, pressed nearer, yet fading slowly: it was the Old Year going out, the worn-out year of her life. Holmes opened the window: the cold night-wind rushed in, bearing with it snatches of broken harmony: some idle musician down in the city, playing fragments of some old, sweet air, heavy with love and regret. It may have been chance: yet let us think it was not chance; let us believe that He who had made the world warm and happy for her chose that this best voice of all should bid her goodbye at the last.

So the Old Year went out [added: in that music]. The dull eyes, loving to the end, wandered vaguely as the sounds died away, as if losing something,—losing all, suddenly. She sighed as the clock struck, and then a strange calm, unknown before, stole over her face; her eyes flashed open with a living joy. Margaret stooped to close them, kissing the cold lids; and Tiger, who had climbed upon the bed, whined and crept down.

"It is the New Year," said Holmes, bending his head.

The cripple was dead; but Lois, free, loving, and beloved, trembled from her prison to her Master's side in the To-Morrow.

I can show you her grave out there in the hills,—a short, stunted grave, like a child's. No one goes there, although there are many firesides where they speak of "Lois" softly, as of something holy and dear: but they think of her always as [added: not there; as] gone home; even old Yare looks up, when he talks of "my girl." Yet, knowing that nothing in God's just universe is lost, or fails to meet the late fulfilment of its hope, I like to think of her poor body lying there: I like to believe that the great mother was glad to receive the form that want and crime of men had thwarted,—took her uncouth child home again, that had been so cruelly wronged,—folded it in her warm bosom with tender, palpitating love.

It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs, the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms, woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permission through the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the true beauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombre leaves or gray lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, in lilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!

Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at her freed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or to hope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and work and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows vague and incomplete, like an [deleted: an] unguessed riddle [changed to: riddles]. I have no key to solve it with [deleted: it with; added: them],—no right to solve it [deleted: it; added: them]. Let me lay the pen abruptly down. [deleted: Let me lay the pen abruptly down.]

* * * * *

[ The original last two paragraphs:]

My story is coarse, unended, a mere groping hint? It has no conduit of God's justice running through it, awarding good and ill? It lacks determined concord, and a certain yea and nay? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor faithful old Knowles will tell you that it is a dark day: that now, as eighteen hundred years ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks, even now, an unrendered justice. Does he utter all the problem of To-Day? I think, not all: yet let it be. Other hands are strong to show you how, in the very instant peril of this hour, is lifted clearer into view the eternal, hopeful prophecy; may tell you that the slumbering heaven and the unquiet earth are instinct with it; that the unanswered prayer of your own life should teach it to you; that in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of America we find the quiet surety that the To-Morrow of the world is near at hand.

For me, I have no prophetic insight, as I said before: the homely things of every day wear their old faces. This moment, the evening air thrills with a purple of which no painter has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; not a face passes me in the street on which some human voice has not the charm to call out love or power: the Helper yet waits amongst us; surely, this Old Year you despise holds beauty, work, content yet unmastered. Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy: we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their angels only do always behold the face of my Father in the New Year.

* * * * *

[Revised last paragraphs for book version:]

My story is unended, but a mere groping hint? It lacks determined truth, and a certain yea and nay? It has no conduit of God’s justice running through it, awarding apparent good and ill? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor old Knowles will tell you it is a dark day: bewildered at the inexplicable failure of the cause for which his old blood ran like water that dull morning at Ball’s Bluff. [60] He doubts everything in the bitterness of wasted effort; doubts sometimes, even, if the very flag fights for, be not the symbol of a gigantic selfishness: if the Wrong he calls his enemy, have not caught a certain truth to give it strength. A dark day, he tells you: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that now, as eighteen centuries ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world; that your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks, an unrendered justice. Does he utter all the problem of To-Day? Vandyke, standing higher, perhaps, or at any rate, born with hopefuller brain, would show you how, by the very instant peril of the hour, is lifted clearer into view the eternal, prophecy; of coming content could tell you that the unquiet earth and the unanswering heaven are instinct with it; that the ungranted prayer of your own life should teach it to you; that in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of America he finds the quiet surety that the rescue of the world is near at hand.

Holmes, like most men who make destiny, does not pause in his cool, slow work for their prophecy or lamentation. “Such men will mould the age,’ old Knowles says, drearily, for he does not like Holmes: follows him unwillingly, even knowing him nearer the truth than he. “Born for mastership, as I told you long ago: they strike the blow, while—I’m tired of theorists, exponents of the abstract right: your Hamlets and your Sewards, that occasion slip until circumstance or mobs drift them as they will.”[61]

But Knowles’s growls are unheeded as usual.

What is To-Day to Margret? She has no prophetic insight, cares for none, I am afraid: the common things of every day wear their old faces to her, dear and real. Her haste is too eager to allay the pain about her, her husband’s touch too strong and tender, the Master beside her too actual a presence, for her to waste her life in visions. Something of Lois’s live, universal sympathy has come into her narrow, intenser nature; through its one love, it may be. What is To-Morrow until it comes? This moment, the evening air thrills with a purple of which no painter as yet has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; no silent face passes her on the street on which a human voice might not have charm to call out love and power: the Helper yet waits near her. Here is work, life: the Old Year you despise holds beauty, pain, content yet unmastered: let us leave Margret to master them. It does not satisfy you? Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy: we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their angels only do always behold the face of our Father in the New Year.

THE END

Notes

1. In the book version, “Margaret” was changed to “Margret” throughout. We have not indicated each of these changes because of how intrusive it would be to the text, but RHD’s preference was “Margret.”↩

2. Mercy and Christiana go on a spiritual quest in part II of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). ↩

3. The Arians rejected the idea of the trinity and believed that Christ and the Father are separate entities. The Calvinists emphasized the doctrine of predestination.↩

4. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a well-known British poet associated with romanticism.↩

5. A Damascus blade is made out of Damascus steel, noted for its strength and capacity to produce a sharp edge.↩

6. A reference to Fourierist communities, such as Brook Farm in its later phase.↩

7. Cornwallis (1738-1805) was the British general who surrendered to Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War.↩

8. This may be a reference to the Brethren of the Free Spirits, a 13th-century utopian group with a millennial element to their philosophy.↩

9. Auguste Comte (1789-1857) was a French philosopher noted for his contributions to positivism and sociology.↩

10. Jeffersonian democracy posits to a limited view of government that emphasizes state’s rights over federal powers. Federalism, in contrast, calls for federal government with broad power and Constitutional authority.↩

12. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch philosopher who emphasized rationalism. Johann Gottlieb Fitche (1762-1814) was a German philosopher associated with idealism. Henri Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was a French philosopher and founder of Christian Socialism.↩

13. From Dante’s The Inferno 3.56-57. I should not have believed that death had undone so many.↩

22. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is an English philosopher associated with empiricism and the scientific method.↩

23. Arcadia refers to a pastoral setting and is sometimes associated with utopia.↩

24. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) is a Scottish philosopher and historian. Martin Luther (1483-1546) is a theologian and major figure in the Protestant Reformation.↩

25. Evelina or a History of the Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778) is a novel by British writer Frances Burney (1776-1828). Belinda Portman is the protagonist of Belinda (1801), a novel by Irish writer Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849). Lord Mortimer may be a reference to Mortimer Deville, a character in Cecelia (1782) by Frances Burney.↩

26. Bayard is a reference to Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, a French soldier from the late 1400s known as the knight without fear.↩

27. Pantheism refers to the belief that God is everything and everything is god. This doctrine influenced British Romantics and American Transcendentalists.↩

28. Novalis is the pseudonym of Georg Phillip Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), a German Romantic poet and mystic.↩

29. The ghosts of Want, Hunger, and Crime may be a reference to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843).↩

43. The Battle of Chapultepec occurred in September 1847 during the Mexican War. Chapultepec was a castle in Mexico City. Carl Nebel’s “Battle of Chapultepec” (1851) and Lewis Tappia’s “Storming Chapultepec” (@1847) are possible inspirations.↩

48. Abraham Lincoln was elected President on the Republican party ticket in 1860 (inaugurated March 1861); John Bell ran unsuccessfully on the Constitutional Union ticket. South Carolina seceded from the Union in April 1861 after taking control of Fort Sumpter on April 12. ↩

49. In Greek mythology, the Cyclops is a giant with an eye in its forehead.

50. See Luke 15:11-32 for the story of the Prodigal Son.

51. Latin for “Glory to God in the Highest.” This Christian hymn is also known as the Doxology.

52. Ariel is a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

53. The language in this section echoes Rochester’s proposal to Jane in Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

54. Johann Gottlieb Fitche (1762- 1814) is a German philosopher associated with Idealism.

55. Bertand de Born (1140-1209) is a French soldier, nobleman, and troubadour poet. He appears in Dante’s The Inferno as an example of a contrapasso; he carries his head as a punishment for dividing King Henry II and his son.

56. British novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is often credited with inventing many Christmas traditions in A Christmas Carol (1843).

57. “The Atlantic” refers to The Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857 and still in publication. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) is a prominent abolitionist while “state’s rights” is associated with secessionist doctrines. Debow’s Review is a Southern periodical that supported slavery and circulated monthly from 1846-1884.

58. Uncle Toby is a character in Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy (1759-67). Uncle Toby curses, but when the Accusing Spirit takes the oath to Heaven’s Chancery, the Recording Angel “dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.” See Volume IV, Chapter VIII.

59. “Venus del Pardo” (Pardo Venus) is a painting by Titian (1488/90-1576) and also known as Jupiter and Antiope. Venus/ Antiope is painted nude.

60. The Battle of Ball’s Bluff is an early Civil War battle fought in Loudoun County, Virginia, on October 21, 1861. The Union Army under General George McClellan was defeated.

61. See Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lecture on Hamlet (1818). Davis echoes Coleridge’s argument that Hamlet “loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.” William Henry Seward (1801-1872) served as Secretary of State during the Civil War and opposed secession.

Creator

Dublin Core

Title

"At Bay"October 1867Peterson's Magazine

Description

“At Bay”

By the Author of “The Second Life,” Etc., Etc.

CHAPTER 1.

A hot day in Lyons, fifty years ago; the untampered light staring down between the steep, gambrel roofs into the close, dirty streets; the air, when it moved, heavy with the smell of the wine-presses and refuse of the vineyards along the Saone. In an upper front room of a house near the Hotel de Ville, about the hour of noon, two men waited, listening apparently for some sound within. One, an old man, had drawn himself to his full height, his hand thrust into the breast of his embroidered surtout,[1] his gray brows contracted, as if in expectation of a blow which he could not avert; the other paced incessantly to and fro, his hands moving with a nervous irritability about his face and beard. It was a picturesque face, English or American, small, finely cut, with brilliant brown eyes, which glanced uncertainly away from those they met; his figure was puny, but he made the best of it by studied effort at dignity of motion. Once he paused, in his restless walk, near enough to his companion to speak in a whisper.

“You think we did well, Herr von Lindbahr, to choose this man? You will regard his decision as final?”

“There is no surgeon on the Continent with the skill of Mailler. I am content—I am content. But what can he say?” The old man passed his hand feebly over his face. “My girl’s fate is sealed in my mind.”

The younger man drew his breath sharply, glanced about with a strange mixture of pain and irresolution.

“I have never known such symptoms followed by any result but the one,” said the other, controlling his face into its habitual stern repose.

“Not?”

“Not death. Better for her if it were, and for me. No; slow disease; years of pain, ending in deformity.”

He watched the young man turn abruptly away, and stand with his face, half covered by his hand, near the window; the old man’s look was keen and suspicious.

“He is not the true man. He will flinch,” he thought; “that is worst of all for her.”

“Herr Busschet,” he said, aloud, “let one matter be clear between us. You have been a lover of my child these two years; but whatever may be the sentence on her life, which we shall hear in a moment, you are free. No relation exists between you which this—this illness does not annul. She has no claim upon you,” drawing himself to his full height proudly.

Busschet stood where the window of oiled silk was open, looking down onto the street; the heavy torpor of the day weighed on his brain; yonder glittered a cross upon the bridge across the Rhone; opposite, the vineyards of the Carthusian monks sloped downward, gloomy with shadow. It was vivid as a nightmare that pause of waiting—the landscape burned itself into his memory, point by point. He dared not turn his head within; there was the old German waiting. In a room beyond George Busschet stiffened himself to check the unmanly shudder that crept over him; he would have given much for a glass of brandy to steady his nerves.

In the room beyond was nothing save a pine table, and stretched upon it a young girl; a nurse and a surgeon leaning over her. What of that? If the worst came? Other women had been doomed to lives of slow torture, and other men had watched by them loyally until death. He loosened his jacket, it was stifling in here; there was a horrible bondage closing on him, and for life—life. He looked back at the old man furtively. He was no poltroon, he loved the girl. He would be true to her. Yet he pitied himself; he deserved pity, he thought. It was to go about the world with a body of death clinging to him.

Yonder, in the yellow distance, was the peak of Tarare; here was an uncertain shiver of light in the rows of lindens that faced the window; a team of cream-colored oxen passing in the street below, with high, straw bonnets, a la cauchoise,[3] on their heads; a peasant drove them in a dingy chamois-doublet,[4] and flapping hat, trimmed with red-and-blue beads. Through all his long life afterward that day, with every sight and sound in it, was real to him as none other.

He would be true to her—was not she his pard-eyed[5] captive, his wild beauty, whom he had wooed and won yonder in the forest of Baden? He had meant to take her home with him to the States in a year. The old man had called him her “lover;” he did not know. Busschet’s limbs shook. What if the old man should ever know? There would be no escape then. But Margaret was true and proud, she would hold their secret. If she did, escape was easy. He was only a student in Heidelberg; he could take passage from Marseilles for America to-morrow. What could the poor German baron, or his daughter, know of the Busschets in Carolina? But he was no poltroon.

The lindens shivered with a passing wind; the yellow distance grew hotter; within and without a terrible silence—a woman’s stifled cry broke it. A slow step came unwillingly from the outer room; as it came he leaned from the window, and the torpid air denied him breath; and the peasant looked up at his oxen with wild, prominent, ill-boding eyes.

When he turned back, he found the physician looking with a grave concern at the old man, whose head had fallen forward upon his breast, one hand thrown up to command silence.

George Busschet went out into the salle[6] with a hurried, unsteady step. He was going to the room where the girl lay, with but one thought in his brain, that her life was miserably wrecked that day, that it was his right to stand beside her henceforth on her long combat with death. She was the old man’s only child, but she was his darling, his—

He stopped short, the word upon his lips. Who knew that? His hand upon the door, listening to the long querulous moans within. Busschet was an effeminate, nervous man, with a strong physical antipathy to pain. To hear that cry day after day, year after year! To be burdened for life with a loathsome cripple! His hand fell off the lock, and he stole swiftly down, and out to the scorching streets, driven by an uncontrollable disgust and terror. He meant to come back in an hour—at noon—in the evening. But when night fell, he yet lingered on the quays.

Three months later, Busschet, in a planter’s dress of white linen, paced up and down the long verandas of a South Carolina villa, with the same uncertain, nervous step, but with a quieted eye. He held in his hand a letter.

“Dead? ‘The little gray-eyed Gretchen, with whom you used to amuse yourself.’ Stromm says, ‘Died miserably of some acute disorder in her father’s old Bavarian hiding-place.’ Then I am safe—my shame can never find me out.”

With the feeling of security, he found breath to regret her share of this trouble, and to think that, after all, he might have chosen the manly part, and not have fled. But she had kept his secret, and he was safe, was the end of his chapter of thoughts on it. Then Busschet, with washed hands, as he thought, began to make ready for his career at home as politician, and the representative of an old, well-placed family.

CHAPTER II

Forty years had passed. There was a long gap of rainy weather in the midst of the bathing season at Nahant—it lasted for a fortnight. Col. Busschet thrust his peaked face out on the balcony of his hotel window one afternoon, glancing sharply about him from right to left, though the dribble from the eaves soaked his white whiskers and hair.

He drew in his head quickly—he had a cat-like antipathy to water. An ostler-boy,[7] to whom he had beckoned, and who came lounging across the yard, thought that he looked not unlike a cat, with his small, supple body in its light, glossy suit of brown, his furtive, quick eyes, and the white, pointed whiskers projecting on either side of his mouth. But the ostler was an ostler, and a man sits in the contracting end of the telescope when viewed from his kitchen.

Busschet ordered the carriage. “We will drive over to see your friend, Mr. Dexter,” he said.

His companion laid down his pen briskly. “Good! if there were any vitality left on the soaked earth, it was chez madame,” he said; then turned to the fire, keeping a furtive watch on Busschet as he paced about, brushing the flecks of rain from his sleeve, buttoning his jaunty surtout, curling his mustache.

“Meanwhile, colonel, you will consider my proposal. I should return to Washington to-morrow, and I must carry your reply with me.”

“It shall be ready. I will convey my views to the President in writing,” with a slight inflation of his narrow chest.

“Yes, yes,” anxiously. “You will, in writing, I hope, ignore the difference in social standing of yourself and Andrew Jackson?[8] It is as well to be blind to his obscure origin and roughness of manner until this matter is definitely settled.”

“Sir, he is un bete,”[9] bringing down his cane with emphasis. “But he is the President of the States, I shall not forget it.”

“Remember, if you please, also, Col. Busschet, that I am an accredited, though unofficial agent of the government. If you enter the Senate, after the coming election, promising your support to this measure, I am empowered to offer you—” his voice sunk to a whisper.

Busschet’s thin face reddened with triumph. But he controlled his voice. “I shall consider the matter,” he said, briefly.

Dexter went back to his writing, hiding a flickering smile. They need not have bid so high for the little old man, he thought, to buy him body and soul. His eyes glittered as if a cup of nectar had touched his lips. Yet Busschet had been a power in his day, a colleague of Calhoun’s,[10] serving his party with scrupulous honor; a man with a shrewd fin,[11] feminine intellect, who had pursued the political path since the day he chose it on the piazza of the villa, without a day’s rest. His long day’s toil over—one step farther, this election secured, and his reward was in his hand.

Dexter read his thoughts clearly as he sat opposite to him in the carriage, watching the old man languidly reclined against the velvet cushions, his furtive, brilliant eye resting on the dull landscape, his delicate, pink nostril scarcely distended by his breathing. It was one of Desprez’s[12] portraits of an old French cavalier, with the dingy background, a ray of light falling on the narrow head, with its silky white hair; the small, bloodless hand, half hid by the laced ruffles of his shirt; a half gray, half pensive smile on the aquiline features.

“I wish especially,” said Dexter, “to make you known to this lady before I go. I wish you to acknowledge that a woman, old and deformed, has exercised over you a more subtle magnetism than any beauty of your youngest days.”

Busschet stroked his eyebrows, blushing and smiling slightly. The fame of his power over women yet lingered about Charleston. Dexter waxed enthusiastic; he smoothed his lean, red beard; he prided himself on his knowledge of human nature. “For me,” he said, “I want to see more of Mme. von Herznay. She is a plant grown in European salons, transplanted to our coarser air and society. She is a lover of her kind. I have never known but the one, though we have reformers in plenty.”

“Madame von Herznay?”

“Madame by courtesy. She has never married; the name came to her with some property, I believe. She is of an old stock Bavaria. Did you speak?”

“No. Bavaria, you said?”

Busschet opened the window. Dexter fancied that his gray mustache jerked nervously, and that the fire-opal on his finger shook.

Busschet looked out into the dull fog; farther at the sea in its most melancholy boding mood. He laughed harshly.

“You know Lyons, Mr. Dexter? Of course—you have done Europe. Some trifle just then recalled it to me.”

“Yes?” inquiringly.

“There’s a queer old Abby there, Aisnay—the Roman Anthenaeum; Brunehaut[13] had a hand in it. I,” wiping his forehead, “I think of Lyons as one of the highways to hell, sir!”

Dexter looked at him with grave surprise.

Busschet laughed nervously. “An old fancy,” shrugging his shoulders. “But I saw it in ’92, hot with the latent fires of the revolution. There was something in the air, I think,, that made men’s natures cowardly. They fell easily into crime, did unmanly deeds—dishonorable,” his thin face burning as if he had been struck.

He leaned back, not heeding Dexter’s suspicious glance. He was thinking how the world held him honorable, and that he was a counterfeit. Neither God nor man could prove him guilty; yet, at the remembrance of his dishonor, he sat there a cowed, defeated old man. The road was dreary and silent; but the best of the surf drowned their voices; and the wind drove the rain against the windows, and sighed shrilly through the gathering gloom of the afternoon. There seemed something prophetic in the coming of this woman, old, deformed, from the land where Gretchen’s lay dead, in this hour of his triumph. What if she knew his secret? What if she came to prove him a criminal, a coward, to blast him before wife, children, country?

“What did you call the family of this Mme. von Herznay?”

“Von Lindbahr.”

His head was turned, but he faced Dexter in a moment. He had his shield up, his face was watchful, inscrutable, cunning.

“Her maiden name, you called—”

“Margaret. But I did not name her.”

He was on guard; and then danger does not convey itself in the first moment with full power. Presently, almost in sight of the cottage where Mme. von Herznay lodged, Busschet recalled an appointment.

“We must not overcrowd the afternoon. We will leave cards only; and to-morrow I will make the acquaintance of your ancient enchantress.

He looked at the name upon his card a moment before giving it to the footman—George Busschet, in bold letters. He was going to meet the peril face to face. If this was the woman he thought, she had come here to find him. Under the name he wrote an hour the next day.

CHAPTER III.

Col. Busschet paced softly up and down in the subdued light of the cottage drawing-room, waiting. Yesterday, the thought of this woman, and the fate she might bring upon him, had been like a touch of palsy, left him weak and insensible as a hysteric woman.

Now that the danger was upon him, and could be met in flesh and blood, he faced it with a quiet, half-jeering courage. He had not forgotten, even with a grim, humor, to dress himself as freshly as a bridegroom about to meet his bride. The stealthy, fastidious nature of the man gave character to the very clothes he wore; the soft, mulberry-colored cloth clung to supple skin to his limbs; the delicate lace ruffling his breast and wrists; the shifting, hiding color of the fire-opal on his finger; the subtle perfume that escaped, when you sought to name it, became a part of the man himself, dainty, weak, and impenetrable.

He went up and down, his hands clasped behind him, with long, noiseless strides, wondering at his own coolness when this decisive hour of life was on him. There was a slight sound, like a far-off step; he stopped, the blood jarring fiercely back to his heart. It was but the fall of some ashes on the hearth, and he resumed his walk, coming at last to a cabinet-picture that hung in a dark recess.

The head of a girl just past childhood, the curved throat rising out of some mass of vapor which lifted itself behind to form the background. The painter’s fancy had been just to evolve the face from mist, its beauty being of the most delicate and fragile type, finely cut as a cameo; the very sadness in the dark, eluding eyes, the obstinacy of the mouth, being rather hints than assertions of character.

Even on this portrait Busschet looked with unnatural composure.

“A face prophetic of ill-fortune,” he said, critically; “but it has a man’s sturdy sense of honor in it. I did well to trust her to keep the secret.”

He remembered, too, as another significant hint of what manner of woman she was, the firm, free step with which she had entered the door of that hotel in Lyons. He wondered how she had borne the sentence. Margaret, his Gretchen,[14] was a sweet, loving fool; this woman he knew by reputation as having made and held her place in the inner-circles of the literary world in Germany. She had a good deal of vitality of the heroic element, Gretchen; for himself (with a shrug) not so much! “It’s an honorable face,” he said, half aloud, hearing a step behind him, “I did well to trust her.”

“It cost but little to keep the secret,” said a quiet voice.

Busschet turned. She looked at the portrait steady and grave, speaking in the same monotonous voice,

“In all the life which was needed to bring my soul from that body to this,” touching her bony, misshapen figure, “there was no pain like that of remembering that I was your wife, that soul and body were wedded to——”

“Dishonor! My faith—yes! I deserve your hate. Let it be bitter as you will.”

“It is too late for that.” She crossed before him to a seat, making no effort to hide her person from him. He knew by that trifle that his power over her was gone; and it was a curious sign of the man’s character that it stung him to the quick.

She was a tall, thin woman—her deformity partly hidden by the soft, heavy folds of her black dress. Gold bands at her wrist and waist were the only ornaments she wore; her hair was white, and rolled back artistically from a worn, lonely-looking face; the eyes sunken under shaggy, gray brows. He scanned her coolly as she sat down, declining his motion to a chair with a courteous wave of the hand.

His wife! That the face his fingers had touched, the soft lips he had kissed, the curly hair that had floated on his breast! The firelight rose and fell, bringing the high, straight chair on which she sat, and the thin figure upon it into sharp relief; her head was bent forward, the eyes resting on the fire—she seemed to have neither interest nor concern in him. She held his honor in her hands. The little man, as he stood regarding her, grew pale, his thin lips turning blue; for honor before men was a better and other thing than life to him. The sough of the wind on the shore, and the beat of rain-drops on the window filled the silence.

“Margaret,” he said, at last, “why did you seek me?” holding his jeweled snuff-box in his trembling hand, essaying a smile.

“Not that I wished to keep alive the memory of that which is past.”

He caught at the word eagerly, his wrinkled face contorted and nervous. “No. Let it die—let it die! I tell you plainly, Mme. von Herznay, you have my life under your touch. What can this love of the past century matter to us? It is dead—dead! What is it to you?”

A strange change had passed over the thin face as he spoke. “In feeling, it matters nothing—in law, everything,” she said, quietly.

“I do not understand.”

She glanced at him, lifted her shaggy brows, gave her shoulders a puzzled shrug. Was this trembling, cowardly old man, the master her soul had owned during this life-long contest with pain? She sat silent, one hand over her eyes. In that moment Busschet looked sharply over the yawning ruin before him. He was this woman’s husband; he had deserted her, had married into one of the most powerful families of Carolina. A clean record to bring into the October election, to win all that Dexter promises! Coward and bigamist! His wife and children—— A sharp pain darted through his head, so extreme was his sense of peril; but his sensuous eye noted even then the delicate outline of her forehead, shirred about with its white hair, on which rested a velvet band.

“The little Bavarian has fine tact still in her effects, in the depths of her age and ugliness,” he thought.

He spoke to her. It was the echo of some old word that her husband had used to her in those early days; and the woman who had thrown her life so utterly beneath his feet was alive, after all, in this woman of society—this “lover of her kind.” Something flashed into her eyes, which brought him back to the days in Heidelberg.

“They tell me you have children,” she said, with a strange movement of her hands. “I never had a child,” and then was silent.

“Poor wretch!” thought Busschet, with a dull perception that there might be wants and ambitions outside of a caucus, of Charleston dinner-table.

“After you left me,” she said, “I had nothing—neither beauty, nor love, nor even maiden pride left. Nothing. The years were debased and empty—empty.”

“You had your brain, Margaret, never weak nor idle. You had the whole world of books and art open to you. There is no hunger they should not satisfy.”

“None?” Her lips hardly moved; but the wide eyes laid on his with a look that grew intolerable.

He moved restlessly; for the first time it was clear to him that he had cheated this woman out that which God himself could not give again.

She gathered herself up suddenly into the quiet and self-poise from which she had fallen. “I will not lie,” she said. “Nothing can feed the hunger of an unloved woman.”

“You are at rest and quiet,” he urged, coming closer.

“I am more. I thank God every day for a rich, beautiful life,” her face burning. “I have done the best I could for it.”

“You have fought your fate like a man,” he said, eagerly. “You have forced the world to look at the mischance of your body through the beauty of your soul; you have countless friends in lieu of children; you have the skill to summon from even the passing stranger his best thoughts to entertain you. My life is meager beside yours,” wiping his forehead. “Pass it by on the other side, Margaret. Do not drag out of the past this old blot to darken it.”

He stood waiting for her answer, one hand covering his mouth to hide it.

He had miscalculated the power of her old remembrances. The brief outcry past, she was grave, business-like, in word and motive—duty had taken the reins again.

“I see no reason why your wish should control me—it is a matter of simple right and wrong. There is no room for tragedy or comedy here, Mr. Busschet,” with a slight touch of scorn.

“And you decide?”

“As I have determined for years. While I live, I remain silent. When I die, it will be necessary, for the disposition of my property, that the truth shall be fully known. The good that I would do must live after me,” smiling. ”I must look down on faces that I have made happy. You cannot expect me to leave a secret mine, which can be sprung to destroy my plans. It was to warn you of this that I came. My lawyer holds all the papers containing my story, to be used as soon as I am dead.”

“Her life is not worth a three months’ purchase,” he thought to himself, but he said nothing. The flickering firelight compassionately avoided the sallow, hawk-like face looking into it, as if conscious that death itself would bring no defeat so utter and leveling as that which at this moment held for him.

George Busschet faced the result with his usual keen intuition, and seeing it irrevocable, wasted no breath in regret or whine. He wiped off some foam that had gathered on his lips, and presently looked up, adjusting his gray mustache, his cat-like eyes fixed on hers with a courteous smile. Did she take him for an idiot, to rest passive while she struck away at her pleasure every prop of his life,[15] and let him drift, wrecked, down the stream? Wrecked? Again, the sultry day in Lyons rose up before him; the shadowless room, with its surgeon’s table in the midst, on which she lay, in her nameless pain and loss, while he crept out and left her. Not hers the life that had been wrecked that day. He could the lindens now that lined the pave, as he stole down the hot street, so feverish had every sense grown.

When she repeated again her reasons and her decision, he listened unmoved. “All shall be as you wish, madam. Let us hope that the painful necessity shall be far removed,” with a bow. She was indifferent to his fate as to an insect her foot was raised to crush. But there was a way to balk fate even now, he thought, smiling in her face.

He did not remember afterward how or when he came away. The glaring sun and the dust of Lyons, the bleak stretch of fog, the cry of the breakers, his wife, pink-cheeked, and brown-eyed, and this weazen-faced bigot, were mazed[16] and bewildered inextricably together. As he lay back in the carriage, rolled through the mud and dark sleety rain, he thought dully, again and again, that it had been a paltry, miserable life at best—and he was glad it was so nearly done. Passions of his youth had but a mawkish flavor, nauseating and stale, coming back to remembrance; and they forced themselves back, to-night. He shifted his seat uneasily, for his gouty leg dragged on him, and rheumatic pains began to twinge his back sharply. “The world has had its uses out of old George Busschet,” he laughed, “and begins to shuffle him off indecently.”

In his own field of politics, where he had played whipper-in[17] for his party for ten years, the pack were beginning to follow another man. He could picture Storr’s quiet jibe when this story of madam’s reached him, and Diehl’s grave surprise. “The little dogs and all—Tray, Branch, and Sweetheart,” he muttered, drawing up the blanket over his knees. It was cold, the smell of rank tobacco in the air, he fancied; a glass of his own sherry would put life into his old bones; but the cases had been broken in packing. Since his favorite cook died he had both eaten and drunk slops. “It is time the curtain dropped,” he said, sitting erect; “the play is but the wretchedest of farces;” and coming to his hotel, sat down in his wet boots, and shuddering with lumbago, to wait for morning.

A sudden break in the nor-easter; a soft wet wind bringing smells of the late harvest fields, of freshly kindled wood fires in the village, and more unsavory scents from the fisheries. Rifts of dark blue began to show through the heavy orange clouds overhead, which clogged the horizon seaward, horizoned black by the wind in its search for farther opening for the yet unvented storm. The tide running out, underswept the breakers, already flattened by the long patter of the week’s rain; the caps were hardly enough defined above the sluggish mass of water, to catch the pink glitter of the morning light; far out at sea one or two fishing schooners, and a yacht, drifted idly against the sky-line.

About two hours after sunrise, Dexter, and some amateur fishermen, turned their glasses to the latter craft, which was rapidly dropping out of sight to leeward.

“Busschet has a fresh morning for his solitary sail. A silly whim,” they said.

While the two men idly followed the course of the yacht with their glasses, Busschet paced up and down the deck, freshly dressed, with the perfume of a May morning about him, breathing in the cool, blue air with relish, noting the flash of a bird’s wing overhead.

He had not meant to take the yacht out of eye-sight of land. Busschet was nothing without an audience; but he knew that Dexter and his companions watched him through their glasses. The despair, the ennui sharper than pain of the night before, were gone with his morning’s bath and glass of wine; instead, had come the bodily nerve and relish of dramatic effect with which he would have gone out to fight a duel.

The bathers were out on the beach in their bright red-and-blue dresses; faint bits of music from the band were drifted out through the absolute silence of the bright air. The hands of his watch touched the hour of eleven. Twenty minutes would carry the tide out, “and Peter Busschet will try his fortune then on other seas.”

He passed to the other side of the vessel for a few moments, and then coming back, seated himself composedly on deck, facing the land. There was a low gurgling sound, whose monotony made it heard above the waves, which began to plash strangely high on the sides of the vessel.

He glanced behind him to note how grand a curtain the flame-colored banners of the sky made; he remembered that he had balked her; thought of the funeral his body would have, and settled himself, with a half smile, on his seat.

“My honor is unstained. It is the exit of a king,” he said, aloud, looking at the vast plain upheaving, which should speedily drink him down to muddy death.

There was a great outcry and mourning when the little body, which should bow and smile no more; when the mulberry-colored clothes and the fire-opal, the ruffles and the perfume, all muddied and soaked, came on shore—deep and sincere mourning. A noble ending to a noble life, they said. The poor German woman, who had loved him, carried away another doubt and pain to fight down in her life.

But the great Nemesis, who sees the trial of life with other eyes than ours, knew that against him judgment had been rendered.

[8] Jackson (1767-1845), seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and is recognized as the founder of the Democratic Party and for his forcible removal of Native Americans from their native lands under the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

[13] Brunehaut or Brunhilde (534-c.613), queen of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. After her sister and husband were assassinated, she was involved in a bloody battle for power for herself and her descendants.

[14] A pet name among Germans for Margaret. In the original, it is not capitalized here but is a few lines lower on the page, so I have capitalized it here.